Cursive, Ottobar 8/8/09

YES, WE CANNOT RESIST CURSIVE, especially when they play the club less than five minutes from our house, on a Saturday night. As I’ve just returned from the show, have a drink to mix and a water to glug, I will stick (for now? eh, let’s not kid ourselves…) solely to the set list. I will add, however, that as blown away as I was by “What Have I Done” at the DC show earlier this year, having him sing it from the audience, and reach the “take a look around you, you’re preaching to the choir…” part two people away from me was unbelievable.

They started around 11:15, went until 12:40.

Dorothy at 40
Mama, I’m Satan
The Radiator Hums
Driftwood: A Fairy Tale
Making Friends and Acquaintances
Bad Sects
Butcher the Song
Mama, I’m Swollen
The Martyr
Some Red-Handed Sleight of Hand
Art is Hard
What Have I Done?
[encore]
Big Bang
I Couldn’t Love You
Modern Love (yeap, Modern Love, with members of Love Language on percussion and vocals and general goin’ crazy)
The Recluse
The Great Decay

Note: This was one of the, uh, other kind of Cursive shows. Actually, maybe the DC was the other, and this was the normal? In other words, Mr. Kasher seemed a bit soggy (only in his demeanor, the playing and singing was pretty much up to par), and rather than the occasional dramatic pause, songs like The Martyr or Dorothy paused for a good three to five minutes at the dramatic peak so we could all have a good smarm fest (on both sides). In “The Great Decay,” this actually devolved into a ridiculous(ly entertaining) rooster-call/vocal-scat call-and-response session between Tim, members of the band, and a couple of audience members he tilted the mic to. When he first started doing it, I thought first that it was a subtle “Arrested Development” reference, then for a brief instant believed/wished/hoped they were about to dive into “London Calling” (or as I called it before I knew the name, “the rooster song”).