I don’t remember when I actually found Cursive. All I know is that I had a copy of their debut album Such Blinding Stars For Starving Eyes. I probably picked it up because that was around the time I found out about Mineral and other bands on Crank! Records. I played Cursive’s debut a lot, especially the first two songs “After the Movies” and “Downhill Racers.” It sounded so much like Mineral, both in its instrumentation and lyrical content, that I gravitated towards it.

However, I didn’t really keep up with Cursive again until the release of their fourth album, The Ugly Organ, in 2003. That album, which is a full-blown concept album focusing on the Ugly Organist’s maneuverings through love, life, and loss. The narrative and presentation grabbed me, but what really sucked me in was the musical composition, which consists of the typical rock instruments but also a cello, organ, trombone, vibraphone, and other things one would not necessarily think about in a “rock” album from that period. Add to this the grandiose, discordant soundscapes, coupled with the lulling moments, and I was hooked.

While I really love The Ugly Organist, partly because it reminds me of cool fall days, Cursive’s fifth album Happy Hollow, which came out in 2006, hit me like a ton of bricks. Like its predecessor, Happy Hollow is a concept, but unlike The Ugly Organist which tells a narrative focused on a singular character and those they meet, Happy Hollow focuses on a small community and each song focuses on a few inhabitants, like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesberg, Ohio. The album deals, head on, with so many issues that I found myself questioning, even before I had the language to question them. It deals with everything from the myth of the American Dream and uncritical patriotism to Christian nationalism and attacks on science and knowledge.

“Opening the Hymnal/Babies” lays out the entire concept of Happy Hollow, with Tim Kasher welcoming us all to the “small town” where we will hear, through the lyrics, “the neurosis of a city” that harbors within each residence “the guilt, the fables, and folly of the residents residing within.” What makes this opening powerful stems from the fact that midway through the opening hymn, the song shifts, right as Kasher starts to describe the meanings of the hymn in order, beginning with the first hymn that deals with “the son of God complex.” The song then shifts to “Babies,” where Kasher points out the delusions of individualism and the idea that no one is “the chosen one”; rather, we all reside on this earth and “simply exist.” This, in a nutshell, is the overarching themes of Happy Hollow, that we live on the rock for however long then we die, leaving those we behind in this mortal coil. Then, the question arises, “What do we do with this existence while we are here?”

I could spend the rest of this post walking through each of the hymns on Happy Hollow, but I don’t want to do that. Instead, I want to focus on some of the specific songs that really stood out to me, and ones that I go back to again and again, starting with “Dorothy at Forty,” a song that questions the availability of the American Dream and our drive to constantly work, day in and day out, for our very survival. It’s about a woman who, when younger, “had amazing dreams,” but as she got older, those dreams vanished and she became stuck in a routine, boring job and existence. She had big dreams, but she also dreamed of stability, with “dream cars, dream houses, dream jobs, dreams spouses,” the American Dream.

These dreams though, didn’t come to fruition. The dream of the “cities of emerald” merely exist as dreams because the “American dreams pollute our cities” and the slices of American pie “can’t fill our bellies.” It can’t fill us up because we are made for much more than just the acquisition of material wealth and goods. We want those things because they make life easier. At the end of the song, as Dorothy stays in bed dreaming, she thinks about material things as well as “more paid vacation,” the ability to take “naps at noontime,” and adequate “compesation.” Each of these things lead to greater productivity, to greater work satisfaction, which ultimately leads to more income for whatever company Dorothy works for when she has to wake up at the end of the song and go to work. These basic things, along with food, housing, clothing, and other things to make lives stable, benefit everyone. “Dorothy at Forty” interrogates, through its cinematic sound and lyrics, the very idea of the American Dream.

Some of the most important songs for me on Happy Hollow directly confront religion, either religious ideology that demeans science, Christian nationalism, or patriarchal religious ideas that deny individuals the chance to express their true selves. All of this starts with “Big Bang,” a song that blasts through the speakers with horn bursts and references the Scopes Monkey Trial in the first verse and how the church seeks to maintain power by arguing for the infallibility of the Bible. Kasher sings, “They say there was a big bang once, but the clergyman doesn’t agree.” The idea of the Big Bang and the universe being 13.8 billion years old “don’t jive with Adam and Eve” and the Biblical creation stories that would place the earth and universe at 6,000 years old.

I’ve always questioned the interpretation of creation in Genesis because I knew about the scientific age of the universe. I always would think that a day to God doesn’t mean the same thing to us. Now, as I’ve learned more and more about the Bible and its formation, I come to think about the creation stories in relation to other creation stories across the world. I think about as a way for the burgeoning Jewish culture to formulate its stories, to express their beliefs and ideas. In this manner, the creation story serves not as “fact” but as a way to explain existence, and, as Kasher asks near the end of the song, “In a world of enrtopy, why can’t we just simply be?” Echoing “Babies,” this question reminds us that we simply must exist on this planet, along with everyone else, and if that is the case, why don’t we try and make this planet the best it can be for everyone and for future generations.

No song of this album, though, hit me as hard as “Bad Sects,” with “sects” referring to a religious sect but also being a play on “sex” because the song deals with a religious leader coming to terms with his sexuality as a gay man. For over twenty years, he stod in the pulpit, went to football games, administered the Eucharist, and became a part of the community. However, when a boy whom he taught theology came back home “with a new ideology,” the clergyman felt his sanctuary threatened. He buries himself deep inside because, as he sings at the end, “I know this is wrong ’cause I’m told this is wrong.” Coming on the hells of “Big Bang,” the meandering, dreamy guitar causes an atmospheric feeling of both pleasure and fear that permeate the song as a whole.

Earlier in my life, I would argue adamantly that someone being LGBTQ was a choice, plain and simple, no debate. I even held this view when I would listen to this song, but a s I have grown, I know that my thoughts were wrong and reprehensible because in thinking that way, I denied individuals the ability to become their true selves. I thought this because, like the clergyman, I was told this is wrong. Many things changed my mind, including the friendships I formed with individuals. One such friendship, which mirrors this song in some ways, was with two men in their 80s. The both, at an early age, married women and had kids, but later, instead of hiding themselves, came out as gay and found one another, becoming the first gay couple, in 2015, to get married in their county. One of the men was, and is, an Episcopal priest, getting a theology degree and preaching from the pulpit. Learning about their story, about Pauli Murray, and about so many other LGBTQ theologians and pastors, I know that what I learned was wrong, that, my thoughts, whether people knew them or not, harmed others.

I could write about so many more songs on this album, including “Flag and Family” which deals with uncritical patriotism or “At Conception” with deals with reproductive rights. I could write about “So-So Gigolo” which deals with sex work or “Into the Fold” with deals with sexual abuse by men in power. There is so much here, and it’s an album that warrants a listen from start to finish. Happy Hollow lays bare the secrets that lie behind the masks of individuals, the masks that present stability, love, and kindness, but that hide secrets, some placed upon the individual to keep their true identity safe and others to hide their own evil thoughts and actions.

What are your thoughts on this album? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.bsky.social‬.