I Am Gemini - Cursive

It’s been a long three years since Saddle Creek favourites Cursive released Mama, I’m Swollen, and despite a couple of decent solo albums from front man Tim Kasher, it seems like the time is just about right for another effort from his most successful venture. Step forward I Am Gemini, Cursive’s sixth album, complete with an intriguing press release detailing, in gratuitously wordy detail, the album’s story: evil twins, a struggle for the soul, and most interestingly, ‘the first time Kasher wrote album lyrics in a linear fashion’. Intriguing.

Almost a decade on from The Ugly Organ, the band’s finest achievement to date and one of the greatest rock records ever, Cursive appear to be channelling the spirit of their opus through I Am Gemini. It's not as successful as you might think. Sure, all the trademarks are there – the discussion of carving knives in the haunting ending of Warmer Warmer is instantly evocative of The Butcher’s Knife, and Kasher just can’t keep away from the organ imagery used so prominently throughout the band’s back catalogue – but something seems to be lacking. The recycled imagery and a return to a heavy, crashing musical style means the record harks back to the roaring glory of Domestica, but the band can’t seem to shake the dip in form that has epitomised their more recent efforts.

Aside from the baffling inclusion of The Cat and Mouse, one of the weakest tracks on any Cursive release I’ve heard, it’s difficult to place exactly where the record is going wrong. Lyrically the album is strong, but Kasher’s radical writing technique isn’t convincing – it provides a cohesive narrative across the record, undoubtedly, but this detracts from the storytelling within each individual song that characterised Cursive so distinctly in the past. The story itself is also lacking: where Cursive records usually plant you right in the middle of a scene that could easily be happening next door, I Am Gemini fails to portray a convincing, personal scene. The most poignant lyric on the record, Hello Skeleton’s “History can be so strangling,” appears to say more about the lack of progression in the band itself than it does about Kasher’s metaphorical twins. Musically, however, the album is excellent: it encompasses the whole range of the band’s talents, resulting in a mixture of jagged, stop-start rock like Wowowow and swelling, sedate tracks like Eulogy for No Name. Perhaps an over-arching musical theme is what I Am Gemini is missing.

As easy as it is to criticise I Am Gemini as unoriginal, lacklustre, or missing that certain spark that made Cursive so brilliant in the era of Domestica and The Ugly Organ, the fact remains that this is a solid album. Discount the band’s triumphant past and this is a strong album with a wealth of musical variety and a truckload of lyrical imagery: unfortunately, we’ve seen the whole range of styles from Cursive before, and this is what drags the record down. When Kasher mutters “I’ve done deeds I can never repeat” in Twin Dragon/Hello Skeleton, it feels like an damning (but accurate) self-assessment of a band aware they are struggling to hit the heights of their illustrious back catalogue.