Cursive

No one can accuse Tim Kasher of lacking ambition. The Omaha-based leader of proto-emo quartet Cursive set the bar exceedingly high with 2003’s The Ugly Organ, a self-lacerating song cycle of interpersonal dysfunction that remains the band’s defining statement. On Happy Hollow, Kasher turns his gaze outward, offering a fractured-mirror repudiation of Our Town bonhomie in 14 songs that depict a community stifled by shattered dreams and religious repression.

Yanking the curtain of fantasy aside, Kasher reveals the yellow-brick road as a dead-end street. “We’re not the kids that we once were / And we can’t be the adults we want to be,” a nameless protagonist laments in “Dorothy at Forty.” (A sequel, “Dorothy Dreams of Tornadoes,” summons natural disaster as the only means of escape.) Throughout the album, the Bible Belt functions as a noose: In “Flag and Family,” a young burnout rails against a family and girlfriend intent on shipping him off to “holy war” to shore up his character. “Bad Sects,” despite its atrocious title, deals tenderly with a clergyman’s perilous secret, while “At Conception” alludes to darker deeds in its depiction of a conservative priest whose hard line on abortion mysteriously softens.

It’s compelling stuff, with arrangements to match: Replacing the stately cello of earlier discs, blazing horn charts and glowering keyboards create an atmosphere that’s both carnivalesque and claustrophobic. But as usual, Cursive’s caustic tales are set to irresistibly catchy melodies, performed by a band that swings tight and hard. — Steve Smith