Happy Hollow is the first Cursive album that runs exactly how you expect it to. Responding to the criticism levelled at their earlier records, they've taken the consistency of Domestica, the sound of The Ugly Organ, and completely avoided the repetition and laziness that dogged everything they released before that. So is this their best album yet? Just about. The biggest criticism we can level here is that there are no songs on the level of the four that dominated The Ugly Organ ("Big Bang" comes damn close, though). Still, there's nothing here that's bad, either, and that makes this the first Cursive record that stands up for itself front to back. You can't help but suspect that they're growing up all the time - the addition of horns and a dramaticism borrowed from The Paper Chase proves that - and that their next record will be even better; even so, this is a great record from a band that, at this point, we might legitimately call 'special'.
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