The Good Life

"Tim Kasher is the best indie diva since Greg Dulli, singing every line like he’s strung between last call and his last breath." – Spin "…hushed, densely written songs…on which the pairings are even sadder than the splittings." – New York Times "Tim Kasher…wrenches sad-eyed beauty out of slow indie-folk arrangements while eulogizing several affairs…" – Rolling Stone There's something to be said for throwing down all the money you've won and laying all your cards on the table, face up.  It's a gutsy move - one that takes a bit of courage, a bit of crazy, a bit of worry and a staunch belief that the outcome will be well worth the risk.  Musically, Omaha, Nebraska's The Good Life lives in a moment of that complexity - led by Cursive's Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), the band - featuring Stefanie Drootin (bass), Roger Lewis (drums), and Ryan Fox (guitar, keys) - creates bold songs that are not afraid of the mixed up emotions they describe, sometimes in vicious, heart-battering detail.  The characters that inhabit Good Life songs live on the precipices of courageous, crazy, worrisome and determined, throwing down the hand they’re playing in each relationship they’re trying to save or hoping to begin.  Every song on the band's fourth and finest LP, Help Wanted Nights, delivers those perspectives with sheer aplomb -- sometimes a little messy, sometimes a little blurred, but never ashamed of asking for what they need. Born in the late 90’s within small coffee shops around Omaha, The Good Life’s first record, Novena on a Nocturn, came out on Better Looking Records in 2000.  Initially, The Good Life was a nom de plume for Tim Kasher, though he later recruited drummer Roger Lewis and others to help him flesh out the songs on the road. In 2001, they started working on a new album, bringing multi-instrumentalist Ryan Fox into the fold, and released Black Out in March 2002 on Saddle Creek.  While touring in support of Black Out, Stefanie Drootin joined the band to play bass among other things.  Word about The Good Life began to spread like a wildfire right in time for the 2004 releases of the Lovers Need Lawyers EP and Album of the Year LP, which both won the quartet heaps of critical praise from music fans the world over.  After lots of touring, they took a little time off, coming back together to begin working on their newest collection of compositions.  Indeed, the resulting LP, Help Wanted Nights, contains some of the greatest tunes in The Good Life’s catalogue.   Recorded by A.J. Mogis in Omaha, NE, the songs on Help Wanted Nights were written to take place in the same small-town bar, and were initially meant as the soundtrack to a screenplay that Kasher started writing in 2006 (he’s since completed it). Unlike Album of the Year’s start-to-finish narratives, these songs seemed to describe moments of raw emotion more than telling a tale.   Keeping with this, when it came time to prepare the tunes for the studio, The Good Life decided to keep the songs as close to their original incarnations as possible, spending long practice sessions on arrangements to record them as true to their form as they could.  The resulting recordings, all set to tape, show the compositions on Help Wanted Nights as more stripped down and threadbare than previous Good Life creations.   This isn’t to say that the songs on Help Wanted Nights are not expansive; quite the contrary.  Akin to stark lyricism of artists like Bruce Springsteen, each track digs into deep emotional territory through its narrative and melodies.  Some songs touch on a dark version of Americana, as seen on the grand chords of "You Don’t Feel like Home to Me" and the church organ hum of "Rest Your Head."  Others are softer like "So Let Go," which delivers its late-night laments via hushed vocals, moonlit, reverb-driven guitars and washed out cymbals.  “Heartbroke” dissects a break-up with a heavy dose of sarcasm, while “Keely Aimee” is the best song Fleetwood Mac never wrote.   Achingly beautiful and sharply astute, Help Wanted Nights details human nature in the most honest way possible, taking risks without regret. The tracklisting for Help Wanted Nights is: 1.  On the Picket Fence   2.  A Little Bit More   3. Heartbroke   4.  Your Share of Men  5.  You Don’t Feel Like Home to Me 6.  Keely Aimee   7.  Playing Dumb  8. Some Tragedy   9. So Let Go   10. Rest Your Head