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monica and i made it out to the starlight ballroom a few weeks ago for the cursive show, it was quite excellent.

opening were the thermals. i liked them when they sounded like GBV, but i was bored by their live performance; their politics consists of exactly the type of heavy-handed rhetoric and sloganeering that i’d praised cursive for avoiding in my last post. when harris snarls the line, “pray for a new state, pray for assassination” you just want to slap yourself in the forehead because if there ever were a true revolution in the U.S., everyone in that room would be the first to go.

i’m not sure what the hold up was (it seemed like it may have been PA related) but cursive took forever to get started. in fact, we were able to hear coltrane’s blue train in its entirety while waiting. it was hot, packed and i was at the end of my claustrophobic tether just as they hit the stage. they opened with “so so gigolo” off the new album and from then on it was an incredible set of songs, mostly from the last three albums. they had the full happy hollow band complete with horn section, which added to the sound exponentially, especially on songs from the ugly organ.

the highlights for me happened to be my favorite songs - “the recluse”, “the lament of pretty baby” and “a gentleman caller” but really, i can’t think of any weak numbers except for “the tide is in” and the one song that no one seemed to recognize. every song grew into a cross between a revival and a punk rock singalong and the crowd was totally into it. this is what i remember of the set list; aside from the first and last songs it’s probably full of errors and out of order. i don’t write this stuff down:

so so gigolo
friends & acquaintances
butcher the song
the recluse
hymns for the heathen
the martyr
big bang
the lament of pretty baby
some red handed sleight of hand
dorothy at forty
bad science
a gentleman caller
art is hard
the tide is in
???
sink to the beat