so, my general perception of cursive hasn't changed: i could imagine them releasing a string of really strong records at some point, but the rather substantive potential that they're hinting at never gets realized. there's a bunch of bands like this from the same period - thursday, ..trail of dead, the dear hunter, muse, etc - that just don't seem able or interested in getting past this level of abstraction, or conversely of just resorting to a more primitive rock sound. so, you get this kind of not-really-art rock pasted into this not-really-punk rock song structure, leaving something that isn't even pretentious, really. i mean, i'd actually probably like it a little bit better if it was actually trying to be pretentious.

a better term than pretentious is pedestrian, in the sense that it neither really rocks very hard nor gets very artsy. it's more like mildly abstract pop rock. by straddling things i like without really committing, i'm just left unsatisfied with it. it's just lacking, all around.

as mentioned, i've listened to a lot of their work, but i don't know the ins and outs of their discography well enough to compare this to their other records. it strikes me as stasis - it's not good enough to pull me in, but not bad enough to get me to go away and leave them alone, either. so, i guess i'll have to wait until the next one to see if they've clicked, yet.

i need to start getting out of the house a little bit more; if i was feeling better, i may have gone, anyways.

and, i need to listen to mewithoutyou now, which were also on the bill, and are in roughly the same category.

https://cursive.bandcamp.com/album/vitriola