1998, after a couple years of touring, Cursive announced that they were breaking up. The primary cause was Kasher's marriage and move with his wife to Portland, Oregon, though guitarist Pedersen was planning on also leaving the band and Omaha to attend law school in North Carolina. Cursive recorded The Storms of Early Summer: Semantics of Song as a swan song in the spring of '98 before disbanding, and released the album post-breakup in the fall of that year on Saddle Creek Records. The Storms of Early Summer was Kasher and Cursive's first foray into writing and recording a concept album, with the first half of the album being themed "Man vs. Nature" and the second half "Man vs. Self". The album was noted for its intricate guitar work, deeply thoughtful lyrics, and the beginnings of a math-rock/pop song structure, all of which would develop more on further Cursive albums. Reformation: Domestica and Burst and Bloom (1999–2002) A little over a year later, in the summer of 1999, the band re-formed when Kasher got divorced and returned to Omaha. With Pedersen gone to law school, Ted Stevens (formerly of Lullaby for the Working Class) joined the band on guitar and vocals. Within a year Cursive recorded and released their third full-length album, Domestica, in 2000. A concept album about the dissolution of a marriage, Domestica gained Cursive critical success for the first time. While not a straightforward autobiographical account of his marriage, Kasher has acknowledged that it heavily influenced the album, though some of the relationship dynamics – such as infidelity – were not autobiographical. Reviewing Domestica, Pitchfork's Taylor Clark gave the album an 8.0/10.0, calling Tim Kasher's style as "the perfect inflection and expression from the far-from-perfect vocal chords, the brains evident behind the guitar brawn" and that the band's sound had evolved since The Storms of Early Summer, saying that Cursive "retained their razor edge, creating pulsing, rapidly evolving guitar-based music, yet they're now fueled and guided by the meaning behind the music". Cursive added Gretta Cohn as a cellist in 2001, as Kasher felt the addition would help the band evolve its sound. They recorded and released 2001's Burst and Bloom EP on Saddle Creek Records, and split an album with Japanese band Eastern Youth in 2002 called 8 Teeth to Eat You on Better Looking Records. Burst and Bloom's lead-off track, "Sink to the Beat," is