★★★★★
"Don't wanna live in the now, don't wanna know what I know", insists Cursive frontman Tim Kasher, in an opening track that promises this album will be as harsh, confrontational and aggressive as its brilliant predecessor 'Happy Hollow'. Alas, this isn't quite the case. 'Mama, I'm Swollen', Cursive's sixth offering, is a disappointingly subdued affair...
- www.thecmuwebsite.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Sound: This is an amazing CD. The first track is a creepy sort of intro with an organ playing vile sounds, and a guttural but faint scream blaring in the back. The next track, "Some Red Handed Sleight Of Hand" opens the record with a sort of punkish/emo flare, but as the record progresses it defies any genre. the music is almost ugly at times, the guitars ranging from extremely clean to extremely dirty...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2012-04-12
★★★★★
It is an odd truth about theatricality that in order to evaluate it honestly one must first ignore it completely. Theatre is window dressing, which is not to minimize its importance, but in order to, say, rite a review of a theatrical thing you should always start by asking, "What is this thing without the window dressing? What is it without its theatrical flourishes...
- www.cokemachineglow.com
2012-04-02
★★★★★
The '90s were kind of a miniature Dark Age in music's history. Grunge reminded everyone that life wasn't always as much fun as hair metal bands made it look, and all the drugs made even something as inherently rad as partying look like fun was getting its revenge on us for abusing it for the past 20 years. At some point, people started sub-categorizing music created by and for, and representative of the nation's bitter "emo" youth and Cursive started doing it better than pretty much anyone...
- www.ink19.com
2012-04-02
★★★★★
I Am Gemini, the great Cursive's seventh album, comes with a twelve page "play" of sorts, which purports to tell the story of twins that are separated at birth. As the press kit breathlessly notes, one twin is good, and the other is evil, "Are they two halves of one whole?" My first reaction was: "what the hell?' The mystery lessened, a little, when I realized that this is a concept album to end all concept albums: the play in fact is the lyric book for the album...
- www.adequacy.net
2012-03-06
★★★★★
Cursive's latest Saddle Creek release is another concept album, this time involving a pair of estranged twins, Cassius and Pollock (one good, one evil), and their torrid, destructive relationship. The idea of a thematic offering is far from foreign to the Nebraska natives, as previous releases have involved dramatic tales of love, woe and despair. But the thing about Cursive has always been how fantastically well structured their music is...
- exclaim.ca
2012-03-06
★★★★★
Cursive's Tim Kasher is no stranger to concept albums. In fact, a majority of the records he's released in the past twelve years have revolved around one central theme or another...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2012-02-27
★★★★★
Cursive are a band of vagrants, straying away from the plethora of genres that have been plastered on them since 2000's "Domestica" by reinventing themselves so many times. Arguably, Tim Kasher and co. are some of the most criminally underrated creative minds of the 21st century. Creating one of the most angst-ridden, narcissistic concept albums with 2003's "The Ugly Organ" which only followed with a tour with living legends The Cure...
- www.alterthepress.com
2012-02-27
★★★★★
When considering the failure of Cursive's concept album I Am Gemini, it may be helpful to ponder the words of Stephen Sondheim. Or Friedrich Nietzsche. Or noted aesthetic philosopher Phife "Go get yourself some toilet paper 'cause your lyrics is butt" Dawg. Any words, really, that distract you from those of Cursive lyricist/singer Tim Kasher, because his words are butt. Terrible, terrible butt...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-02-27
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