For all the pained, anguished songs Tim Kasher has written about his divorce, it sure has built him a pretty nice career. With his full-time gig, Cursive, he put together one album based entirely on it (2000’s Domestica), and then followed it up with a string of equally raw, despondent, instantly classic records beloved by fans and critics alike.
But Cursive isn’t the only outlet for Kasher’s multitude of bad vibes. Besides the two solo albums he’s put out, he also fronts The Good Life, a folk-centric band that puts his lyrics at the forefront, laid over quieter instrumentation as opposed to Cursive’s angular punk.
Kasher’s failed marriage has served as the muse for nearly every album he’s worked on as The Good Life, or otherwise, since 2000. There’s a reason I’ve always described Kasher’s music as “divorce-core,” and after 15 years many fans are wondering how much Kasher has left to dredge from his split, especially considering that Cursive’s last album, 2012’s I Am Gemini, was essentially a rock opera about two long lost brothers.
The Good Life’s new album, Everybody’s Coming Down, tries very hard to avoid typecasting. For one, it’s louder than their past work, with jangly rockers like “Everybody” and “Holy Shit” being the closest the band has ever come to replicating Cursive. Lyrically, many of Kasher’s favorite themes are present — uncertainty, anguish, loneliness — but he does, for the most part, avoid weaving them into “divorce-core.” “The Troubadour’s Green Room” looks back on unfulfilled musical fantasy, while “Diving Bell” extols the dangers of becoming lost in your own head.
There are times when Everybody’s Coming Down can simply sound like background noise. And yes, it’s musically a departure from previous work. But longtime listeners will always hear so many similarities between Tim Kasher’s various projects that any album he puts out is less and less likely to blow the listener away and more and more likely to elicit a detached “that’s pretty good.”
But that being said, the music is still pretty good. Few contemporary musicians have the type of lyrical skill that Kasher does, and when he’s with The Good Life, his stories have the best chance to take the spotlight. Sure, they’re all similar stories, but they’re always enthralling and always warrant a listen.
For Kasher, the focus has always been on the words. But if he were to use the same words too many times, he’d run the risk of becoming one of the drunks of his songs, retelling the same story over and over again. Thankfully, Everybody’s Coming Down is a step in a new direction. Tim Kasher may be bitter, but at least he’s bitter about more than one thing.