Unlike some bands that try to cash-in on their breakup by releasing a
plethora of CDs, Cursive has chosen to reunite and create their best album
yet.


Cursive's Domestica is a document of singer/songwriter Tim Kasher's
ill-fated marriage. While the song structures don't vary too much from the
Cursive we've known in the past, the lyrics focus on fact rather than
prediction.


Kasher's lyrics have always predicted that things -- particularly romance
-- was a painful experience that would not work out in the end. His lyrics
on Domestica take the opposite path and use his experience to show that he
was right.


Domestica's songs tell the tale of Pretty Baby and Sweetie. Pretty Baby is
the female role here, and it's obvious from the start that Kasher places
the blame on Pretty Baby -- the album's opener already places her as
someone with problems when she tells Sweetie that "[she] must learn to
abort these feelings / this romance is bleeding."       


As the album continues, Sweetie and Pretty Baby's romance continues to
disintegrate through songs that sound like accusations ("The Game of Who
Needs Who The Worst") and songs that sound like conversations/arguments
("The Radiator Hums").


Finally, Domestica reaches it's sad conclusion on it's final track, "The
Night I Lost The Will To Fight." This song could serve as an epitaph for
Kasher's failed romance, and it's universality could serve the same
purpose for all of us. "One February night," Kasher sings, "We screamed
our agonies / And I swear I tried to care ... But the icicles hung down
like prison bars / And I lost the will to fight."


Domestica is the perfect album for anyone going through a troubled
relationship. It is dark and bitter album and it revels in it.