Omaha, Nebraska’s Cursive returns today and announces its new album Devourer (Run For Cover Records) which is set to be released on September 13, 2024. The band’s 10th album is full of intense and incisive songs, proving exactly why Cursive has been so influential and enduring–and why it remain so vital. The album’s lead single “Up and Away” is out now alongside the video directed by Brea Grant (12 Hour Shift, Torn Hearts) and stars Jonah Ray. Anchored by a sinuous bassline, the song exemplifies the band’s signature blend of dissonance and deep melody.

“‘Up And Away’ is an unusual pop song, slinking about musically. I had the ‘up, up, up, up, up, up and away’ section of lyrics in my head from its inception but hadn’t planned on using something so bright, cheery and arguably trite…until it occurred to me that what I was really singing about was something floating away from me, something I was losing, not my personal elevation into some stratosphere. So, it stuck,” explains singer/guitarist Tim Kasher. “The video is the first in a series of horror-esque stories we’ve been planning for some time now, a collection of videos created by genre directors. Brea Grant conceived this story of a down-on-his-luck loafer who gets consumed by his own depression, swallowed into some surreal underworld of blanket forts where Cursive seems to be wallowing as well.

“I am obsessive about consuming the arts,” he adds. “Music, film, literature. I’ve come to recognize that I devour all of these art forms and then, in turn, create my own versions of these things and spew them out onto the world. It’s positive; you’re part of an ecosystem. But I quickly recognized that the term, ‘Devourer,’ may also embody something gnarly, sinister.” Devourer delves into that darker space. The characters populating the album have bottomless capacities for consumption, whether it’s resources, material goods, art, or even each other. Then they are consumed by larger forces, whether it’s humanity, Earth, dreams, time, or life itself. “Maybe a better word for it is imperialism,” Kasher says. “But it’s in many different forms. It’s not just the political. It’s personal imperialism and the imperialism of relationships, the way we imperialize one another, even ourselves.”