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The Good Life

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Album of the Year
Released: Aug 10, 2004
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{$The Good Life} follow up the excellent {^Lovers Need Lawyers} EP with their best record yet and maybe the best {\indie rock} record of 2004. {^Album of the Year} is a concept record of sorts, one song for each month, each song a heart-rending essay of love found, lost, broken, or ripped apart, ranging from the puppy love {&"Album of the Year"} to the depressed, resigned-to-loss {&"A New Friend"} and {&"Two Years This Month."} {$Tim Kasher} has found his voice, and almost all traces of previous {$Robert Smith-isms} are gone; instead, he whispers, hollers, cajoles, and confesses in a voice stripped of artifice and plugged right into the listener's soul. The record is perfectly constructed. Based around acoustic guitars, the songs are colored in with keyboards, various percussion instruments, and glockenspiel, and made dramatic and often breathtaking. Songs like {&"You're Not You"} and {&"Album of the Year"} are pocket epics, created out of atmosphere and dynamic shifts in mood. Most of the songs are relatively downbeat, but a few, like {&"Lovers Need Lawyers,"} show that the band can write snappy {\pop} songs as well. {$Kasher}'s lyrics are incisive, personal, and about as honest-sounding as {\rock} music can get. He doesn't flinch from any topic -- not sex, lack of sex, divorce, self-mutilation, or his own shortcomings -- and manages to never pen anything that leaves the listener queasy. He gives the most self-lacerating song, {&"Inmates,"} to guest vocalist {$Jiha Lee} to sing "lover done wrong" style before they sing the second half together like an {\indie} {$George} and {$Tammy}. The attention to detail in the production, the punchy melodies, and the sympathetic performances by the group -- along with {$Kasher}'s writing that is nothing less than gripping and often head-shakingly brilliant -- make this record an indispensable artifact for anyone who likes {\indie rock} with a real emotional punch. The record comes with a second "bonus" disc that presents the songs in their acoustic demo form. It is a nice addition, but you will find yourself listening to the first disc more often simply because of the wonderful production values. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide

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Lovers Need Lawyers
Released: May 18, 2004
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On {$the Good Life}'s 2004 {^Lovers Need Lawyers} EP the band pares down its sound and comes across as a tough {\post-punk} band rather than dramatic '80s {\synth pop} revivalists. The electronic... Continue[+]

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Black Out
Released: Mar 4, 2002
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As disparate as debut {^Novena on a Nocturn} was, {^Black Out} is even more courageous. The album employs moodier instrumentation, creating a melancholic disposition that's as discomfiting as it is... Continue[+]

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Novena on a Nocturn
Released: Oct 31, 2000
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Essentially a solo project for {$Cursive}'s {$Tim Kasher}, albeit with plenty of instrumental help from a variety of friends, the debut album from {$the Good Life} is the culmination of 12 years of songwriting outside his full-time gig. Those 12 years must have been filled with some great bygone LPs and a fair helping of woe, because instead of the '90s indie pop of {$Cursive}, {$Kasher} explores stark and angular ground on {^Novena on a Nocturn} that recalls no one more so than the Brit-pop icons of the 1980s. The dour and miserable sentiment of {$the Smiths} and {$the Cure} ({&"The Competition"} would have fit perfectly on {^Disintegration}) bleeds into the detached and alien sound of synth-pop combos like {$Human League} and {$Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark}, with the lush, melodramatic theatricality of new romantics {$Soft Cell} and {$Ultravox} draping over each song like a wet blanket. These are pure coffeehouse and cabaret tunes with a sustained atmosphere of haunting, world-weary ache. In addition to their '80s forebears, the songs explore the timeless songcraft and painfully honest life-lessons of artists such as {$Jacques Brel}, {$Kurt Weill}, and {$Scott Walker}. The music is minimalistic but also cleverly layered with intriguing sounds, particularly eerie keyboards and bits of electronics. It is sweeping, intense music with volumes of emotional resonance and a tragic undercurrent. {$Kasher}'s songs are inconsolable prayers of lament and resignation, intimate and almost painfully introspective without exactly being overtly insular. And yet there is an overwhelming sense that you are eavesdropping on a two-way conversation with Job-like epic proportions. As the title suggests, the album has nearly religious connotations, and its nine 'novenas' delve into all the shadows and blue hues of nighttime. Dark and icy imagery spots nearly every tune, and even when a subject like the sun is referenced, as on the final {&"Golden Exit,"} there is something cold and insidious and wintry about its appearance, as if nothing can thaw {$Kasher}'s anguish, nothing can break through the bleakness of his worldview. {^Novena on a Nocturn}, after all, is not about the light; despite the cleverly ironic band name, its purpose is to exorcise all those personal demons that seem to travel in the darkness -- listeners' own individual darknesses. ~ Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide

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