I Is for Improvement

There goes Tim Kasher, stealing album titles from Faith No More again. In The Good Life, Kasher has always sidestepped his work with Cursive by pursuing a more singer/songwriter-worn path. Here he distances himself from the overly weepy moods of earlier albums, possibly the resulting rub-off from Omaha melodrama kingpin Conor Oberst. The band goes the love-waltz route on "Night and Day," while making room for some nice muted trumpet on the smoky "You're No Fool." The underbelly of all this is that someone out there will hear the overwrought screed "Inmates" (sung by former band member Jiha Lee) and mislabel it an "epic."