Cusp - What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back (Ice Blue Vinyl)
Every album is a product of the environment it was created in and nowhere is that more
pertinent than on Cusp’s What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back, their second album and the
follow-up to 2023’s excellent debut You Can Do It All. That first album was one written in
transition while the band 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,” Jen Bender says, reflecting on that experience.
The result of these subtle changes to their form comes to fruition on their thrilling new LP.
Formed of 10 new songs, and recorded almost entirely live off the floor at Electrical Audio, What
I Want Doesn't Want Me Back feels like both a maturation and a reinvention, every aspect of
their sound tweaked and pushed to find new boundaries, to fill new spaces. A number of the
songs here peel back the layers on what it means to write songs, the actual process of music
making and being in a band; how and why we seek validation, 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,” Jen expands. “The ultimate consensus is: yes, this is
worthwhile and yes, it means something.”
A1. Healthy Living A2. Follow Along A3. Oh Man A4. The Upper Hand A5. In A Box B1. I Like My Odds B2. Lie Down B3. Give Up Your Garden B4. Forget Me Not B5. Extracurricular Hell
