Mama, I'm Swollen

We Say...

Review by Kristina Feliciano

Cursive haven't officially dubbed their latest release a concept album, but it could easily pass for one. Mama, I'm Swollen — swollen, it seems, with ripe cynicism, rage and punk rock — often reads like the story of one man's disillusionment and disgust with the world. It's a tale that, musically, has many redeeming qualities, but offers no hope of redemption (though Twyla Tharp could probably fix that.)

The opening track, "In the Now," seems engineered to throw listeners off balance. Its tone and pace are jittery and frenetic, guitars skidding this way and that. "Don't want to live in the now/ Don't want to know what I know," sings Tim Kasher, who then proceeds to describe an unsettling version of the now and the known. The first purge complete, "From the Hips" comes on softly and bursts into fits of churlishness, Kasher dryly theorizing that we were "better off as animals." That might explain why he sounds snakelike on the slithery "We're Going to Hell."

When pumped to maximum theatricality, Cursive come off as members of My Chemical Romance's black parade. In other words, boyish petulance at times threatens to undermine their authority as announcers of the apocalypse. But mostly they sound like artists expressing our worst fears about life at a time when everything seems to, well, suck. They're daring to say outright that it's all pointless — that life is meaningless. "I Couldn't Love You" — in which the would-be protagonist of this would-be rock opera directly addresses his mother — argues for being stubbornly self-destructive not as a form of rebellion, but because there is so little reason to try to do right. It doesn't make a difference to the world, the singer insists, if trouble befalls him and he never makes it home.

I don't know if I'm as ready to embrace abject futility, but if the men of Cursive are right and the end of days is nigh, this taut, nervy album wouldn't be such a bad soundtrack by which to watch it burn.