Every album is a product of the environment in which it was created, and nowhere is that more pertinent than on Cusp’s second album, What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back. While the band’s excellent 2023 debut You Can Do It All was written in transition while they relocated from Rochester, NY to Chicago, What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back comes much more from a place of stability–of roots beginning to form. “With that feeling of being settled comes the space to ask myself new questions about myself and choices I’ve made,” guitarist/vocalist Jen Bender says. As a result, the album feels like both a maturation and a reinvention, with every aspect of Cusp’s sound tweaked and pushed to find new boundaries, and to fill new spaces.
After moving to Chicago, Cusp became the fully-formed and settled five-piece of Bender, Gaelen Bates (guitar), Matt Manes (bass), Tommy Moore (drums, percussion, vocals) and Tessa O’Connell (synths, piano, vocals). This iteration of the band, finally able to all get in a room together, cemented the ideas and energy they’d been honing live on stage over the previous couple of years. The result of these subtle changes to their form comes to fruition on the thrilling What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back. Recorded almost entirely live at Electrical Audio, a number of these 10 tracks peel back the layers on what it means to write songs, and the actual process of music making and being in a band: how and why we seek validation, and the shapeshifting nature of legitimacy. “These questions have come up a bit in some of our previous work, but I confronted them a bit more directly on this record,” Bender expands. “The ultimate consensus is: yes, this is worthwhile and yes, it means something.”
“Follow Along,” a spiky and simmering track, delves into these ideas as Bender explores aspects of her personality that have led to anxiety around her own work and its worthiness. “I have this fear where I am so worried that everyone else around me has these interesting and nuanced personalities and that I am sort of an observer just trying to keep up,” she explains. “Or even worse, that I’m soaking up the personality of everyone around me and passing it off as my own. The narrator of the song is an exaggerated version of me, going through life ‘taking notes’ on my friends and their lifestyles.” Almost sarcastic in its tone, the song covers new ground for Cusp as they turn somewhat heavy subject matter into music that leans into a bold sense of fun. “Oh Man” follows and stays on this same path with an even brighter, snappier mood. All glowing guitars and shifting temperaments, the song is another moment where Bender questions the viability and respectability of her craft.
Elsewhere, “In A Box” takes a more melodic approach, with its weighty sentiments held within a surprisingly affecting song before the whole mood flips to a brazen, skewed, and singularly thrilling finale. This more vulnerable side drifts in and out throughout What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back, and Bender admits that she finds those songs harder to write and share. But they create a balance here, an unexpectedly emotional disposition that is at times hidden under vibrant bursts of guitar, and allows the overall character of the band to breathe and come to life. This choppiness is reminiscent of contemporaries like Built To Spill and Ovlov, and Bender cites both Sadie Dupuis and Adrianne Lenker as influences on her writing; the two reference points highlight the personal nature of the songwriting here that bubbles away under the surface.
“This was the first Cusp project where we recorded the songs live,” Bender reflects. “It was a totally new experience for the band, and I think it really captured a new energy that may not be as present on previous works. It creates this depth to the tracks that is really exciting.” Finding their feet in a new city, in a new home, among new members, Cusp embraced that collective spirit and newfound togetherness to take a leap into a new chapter. What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back thrives within these circumstances, something that is at once as jubilant as it is dynamic.
photo credit: Kim Christoffel
bio: Tom Johnson
