Episode 140 - The Ugly Organ by Cursive

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It’s kinda crazy to think it’s taken us this long to touch a Saddle Creek band, but we got there in the end. This week Mark has picked Cursive’s seminal fourth album The Ugly Organ for inclusion in our discography. A weird mashup of emo, alt-rock, cabaret and more, it’s an album that the band themselves thought might be a bit too weird for a label that had spent many years releasing classic emo records from the likes of Bright Eyes et al.

But no. It went on to sell 170,000 copies and it received serious critical acclaim. Yet, despite this, Cursive remain a band’s band. One that never went on to reach the heights of some of their contemporaries and in the end, they seem quite alright with that fact.

To those in the know, this might not seem like an unsung classic but if you’re the kind of person that likes emo, or the kinda of indie emo stuff that the American midwest seems to churn out by the dozen, it’s probably somewhat baffling that this band aren’t huge. Or not, as some will argue.

Not a contentious episode by any means, this one, but good chat nonetheless. What say, dear listeners: unsung or not?