Kudos to Cursive for misguidedly returning to that no-man’s land of the goth-drenched concept album. Their recent release, I Am Gemini — follow-up to 2009’s Mama, I’m Swollen — attempts to reanimate a corpse by cobbling fairytale influences, carnival oddities and the too-likely tale of estranged twins, Cassius and Pollock, whose reunion engenders a contrived battle between good and evil.
An intriguing premise, perhaps, though hardly a novel one. Its execution is similarly stale, but with merits. Grounded in pounding drums, harmonious guitars and catchy riffs, the production on Gemini is semi-enjoyable. Each song is atmospherically unique, from the promising opening track “This House Alive,” which begins tranquilly and builds into a barrage of drums, to the eager stop-and-go rhythm of “Wowowow.”
Yet no song is a self-contained vignette; worse, the album isn’t cohesive. Frontman Tim Kasher is lyrically confident, but loses the listener in his labyrinth of poorly-executed motifs of split-personalities, bloodletting and demons.
Moreover, Gemini comes off as a gimmick. Cliches pander as poetry in the single “The Cat and the Mouse,” where Kasher unironically beckons, “here kitty, kitty.” In “Twin Dragon/Hello Skeleton,” Kasher brazenly sings of “little piggies running from the majesty of Gemini,” and threatens: “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow this house up.” It’s cringe-worthy; one wishes Kasher would take his advice from “Twin Dragon/Hello Skeleton” and “quit this bravado bullshit.”
Cursive’s hackneyed attempt at a supernatural fairytale is rife with plot-cheapening cliches. The band’s musical Frankenstein falls flat — uninspired and lumbering, the story is too demented to work.