By By Jesse Cataldo
Stephen Pedersen’s life story reads like a soon to be cancelled TV pilot.
A founding member of Cursive during his college years, he quit to attend law school just before band made it big. Upon graduating he settled back in his hometown of Omaha, taking a job as a litigator.
That might have been all, but it wasn’t long before Pedersen felt the familiar stir of restlessness. Hemmed in by his demanding career, he found himself forced into a dual professional identity: lawyer by day, rock star by night.
Criteria premiered in 2003, touring the country on the popularity of Pedersen’s former band and Saddle Creek labelmates Bright Eyes. Their first album, En Garde, was a defiant mix of racing guitar and earnest vocals that fell on the right side of histrionic.
When We Break has a lot in common with its predecessor, but doesn’t fare nearly as well. It’s hard to tell why En Garde worked but When We Break doesn’t, but it undoubtedly has something to do with the music.
When the music fails, as it does constantly on the album’s tired En Garde retreads, the focus falls onto the lyrics. In this case, the music is hiding a lot. The words, still dragging teenage themes of disappointment and dissatisfaction behind adult problems, weren’t built to handle close scrutiny.
This is clear from the beginning, as he drearily emotes on “Prevent the World”: “Even if I try to make rock my living / it wouldn’t coincide / So how do I reconcile the success of life / With the rational urges?” Try as he might, Pedersen’s dense, oppressive wordiness cannot mask the crude simplicity of his themes.
It’s especially disappointing, because the problems of a grown man caught in the trap of an unsatisfying career are more desperate, more hopeless and infinitely more complex than that of a kid stuck in a stifling hometown. Unlike his former band, who made the transition from the travails of teenage life to the struggles of adulthood on Domestica, Pedersen is stuck, stamping everything with the tired label of simple angst.
The music on When We Break crumbles quickly, and it isn’t long before the rest of the album follows. We can only hope that Pedersen’s legal briefs are better constructed than his lyrics.