After a steady diet of near-constant touring across three continents, including a stint opening for The Cure on the 2004 Curiosa tour, Cursive was a quintet on the precipice. Their then-most recent record The Ugly Organ had racked up considerable accolades--named one of 2003's best records by Blender, called "the best album of (the band's) career" by The New York Times and given a 4-star rating by Rolling Stone--but the band, ragged and road-weary, opted for an ambiguous hiatus rather than forge onward to the daunting task of Follow-Up to Hit Record.

All was quiet in Camp Cursive for more than a year... And then, slowly at first, after much decompression and contemplation, they began to discuss and then assemble a new record as a freshly reconstituted four-piece--the longtime core of Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), Matt Maginn (bass), Clint Schnase (drums) and Ted Stevens (guitar, vocals).

The band's reemergence finds them self-assured and assertive as ever. Rather than retread familiar artistic ground, Cursive has unfurled their most adventurous and accomplished work to date, Happy Hollow. Happy Hollow is an expansion of Cursive's trademark discordant swell: dissonant yet distinctively melodic guitar sounds and frontman Kasher's ever-cathartic yowl now mesh and clash with horns, piano, accordion and other various instrumentation. The new songs are marked by a new bounce, a buoyant strut and a recognition that hey... this is fun.