When he isn’t writing songs for The Good Life or touring under his own name, Tim Kasher still plays with Cursive, the band he started with bass player Matt Maginn in the ’90s. They stopped off at Lincoln Hall just a few days into a long tour to promote their new album, I am Gemini. I like the new record quite a bit, better than the last couple at least. It’s a concept album about twins separated at birth – one good, one evil – that reunite later in life. Kind of a cool idea…

For being an album tour, they didn’t over do it on the new stuff. They played maybe half a dozen songs off the new record and filled the rest with crowd pleasers. Check out the setlist. They played pretty much everything I wanted to hear:

• The Martyr
• Driftwood: A Fairy Tale
• Art is Hard
• The Recluse
• A Gentleman Caller

Tim was in good spirits and he didn’t seem as drunk as at some of the other shows I’ve seen. He threw in some lines from No Scrubs at some point – I think in Art is Hard. He decided to fill what he deemed an awkward crowd silence with an even more awkward story about his first handjob and thinking he caught something only to find out later that he had a spider bite on his wiener. I don’t know who gets a spider bite on their wiener – maybe it’s a Nebraska thing.

As usual, Tim brought some friends along with him for the journey. Patrick Newbery and a girl who’s name I don’t know, who both played with Tim on his solo tour, performed with one of the openers, Conduits. Patrick actually played some keys and trumpet with Cursive at this show. Cymbals Eat Guitars were pretty much as expected. Ok, but not really my thing. They sound like a Brooklyn band (although they’re technically from Staten Island).

If you don’t live in Chicago, see them when they roll through your town – they’re stopping about every where on their 60+ date schedule.