Every album is a product of the environment it was created in and nowhere is that morepertinent than on Cusp's What I Want Doesn't Want Me Back, their second album and thefollow-up to 2023's excellent debut You Can Do It All. That first album was one written intransition while the band relocated from Rochester, NY to Chicago. What I Want Doesn't WantMe Back comes much more from a place of stability, of roots beginning to form. "With thatfeeling of being settled comes the space to ask myself new questions about myself and choicesI'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, WhatI Want Doesn't Want Me Back feels like both a maturation and a reinvention, every aspect oftheir sound tweaked and pushed to find new boundaries, to fill new spaces. A number of thesongs here peel back the layers on what it means to write songs, the actual process of musicmaking and being in a band; how and why we seek validation, the shapeshifting nature oflegitimacy. "These questions have come up a bit in some of our previous work, but I confrontedthem a bit more directly on this record," Jen expands. "The ultimate consensus is: yes, this isworthwhile and yes, it means something."