Emo Legends Curse League Return on the literate, Anthemic “Nothing Left but Scraps”
In the six or so years I’ve known about Curse League, it’s only until now that I’ve realized how good their name is. Emo, a lot of the time, doesn’t wield its nihilism conspicuously the way punk does broadly. It internalizes it, treats it like a truism, and instead wears something a little more positive on the surface. Its sense of catharsis oftentimes comes from the small, hard-won victories - honest human connection, even love - that pepper the general malaise of living.
The long-running Seattle-based rock band epitomized this empathy way back in 2018 on their debut LP, Laying By the Fire in Good Company. At the heart of its opaque imagery and blistering riffs lay a cohesive story: of an illegal immigrant, an American orphan, and their enduring companionship in the face of dire circumstances. It succeeded because the band (led by drummer/guitarist/vocalist Jake Campbell) could balance their narrative ambition with an equally impressive technical prowess, and it earned the band a bevy of accolades and admirers.
Six years later, after the Great Reset of the COVID pandemic, Nothing Left But Scraps is more of an apt title than maybe even they realize. Its six songs tackle the current state of America in broadly conceptual terms, but it also hits on the reality of the attention economy, where those who let off the steam even a little are inevitably forgotten. Blessedly, Scraps is a fantastic reminder of what made the band so magnetic in their heyday, with a few twists that show they’ve also grown as a unit.
The first twist: altering the balance between math rock and emo. Verses! Choruses! Repetitions! Math rock songs, by virtue of their maximalist approach to notes and time signatures, tend to be rivers with constantly changing scenery. Many of Scraps’ songs ease up on the complicated switch-ups and inject pop sensibilities into the music that make the anthemic energy hit a little harder.
“Breadline” is a perfect example of this: though the melodies remain mercurial, it never leaves 4/4, even during the breakdown. It’s also potentially the best song they’ve released, both compositionally and in sheer pathos. Clearly none of the band’s members, from drummer Chester Cun and guitarist Kai Brunson to new bassist Blake Ross, have stayed sharp in the time between records. Campbell also remains a powerful vocalist, if even a little more versatile, dipping in to a lower register early on and stretching his vocal cords to the limits on “True Communion.”
The second twist: expanding the band’s capacity for storytelling. The power of Laying’s storytelling relied on mise en place (“The Badlands”) and imagination, with the heart filling in the narrative gaps unreachable by the mind. Scraps’ is just as literate, maybe even more so; the throughline running through Scraps’ is a critique of the American institution, but the narrative is less contiguous and more conceptual. (Think the A-side of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends, for example).
There’s the scarcity mindset embedded in “A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing,” which leads into “Breadline” and the gap of empathy between the housed and unhoused. “True Communion” attacks the Christian nationalism at the crux of the military-industrial complex; “Leashed,” an examination of the poverty epidemic, personifies the ever-churning furnace of capitalism as a night terror; “Lobbyism” faintly traces the link between mindless social media engagement and the wedge of politically-charged division.
Combined, these songs make Scraps a tableau of U.S. degradation that also touches upon some of Curse League’s common imagery: orphanhood, wolves and sheep, North American expanse. But unlike Laying, it ends on a more ambiguous mood via the oblique “Make Believe,” which coats its wistfulness in a sour sheen. The uncertainty feels multifaceted - after years of limbo, it’s time for one of Seattle’s best emo bands to find a home again.