Send "Tim Kasher " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 "Self-absorbed" isn't how you typically describe good art, or good people for that matter, but Tim Kasher has made a nice career for himself as an exception to that rule. Whether in the guise of Cursive's caustic, thrashing emo or the perpetually evolving Good Life's intimate confessionals, Kasher and the central figure in his songs have often seemed like the same guy: someone all too aware of his own flaws but almost entirely unsympathetic; someone condemned to doomed relationships who'd likely still be miserable without anyone else's help. As he states on The Game of Monogamy's "Strays", "writers are selfish, writers are egotists/ I'm afraid I'm as bad as it gets"-- and that's this record's love song.After Kasher's 2003-04 career peak (Cursive's The Ugly Organ, the Good Life's Album of the Year), his musical horizons and themes broadened. And although Kasher had proven to be a master of self-immolation, when tackling Big Topics, his flame only burned lukewarm. As the title of The Game of Monogamy indicates, Kasher's back in his wheelhouse of pain, rendering married life in such suffocating and punishing terms that even the most militant Proposition-8 opponent will think, "we're fighting for this?" It's probably the most typically "Kasher" theme possible, but musically it also serves as a compendium that reconciles his two main projects. Awkward Baskin-Robbins/ sexual dissatisfaction metaphor aside, "Cold Love" is Kasher at his most power-pop, with the sarcastically neurotic "Bad, Bad Dreams" not far behind. On the other end, the delicate acoustic picking on "Strays" makes it sound like a heartbreaker, even if the wearied contentment of finding love amidst lost souls is the closest he gets to happiness. Between those two poles are the bandcamp orchestration you've come to expect from Saddle Creek-- the upbeat brass pomp of "I'm Afraid I'm Gonna Die Here" comes off as totally sarcastic considering its lyrical misery, while the strings of "There Must Be Something I've Lost" throw Kasher even deeper into despair. Even so, as with most of Kasher's work, the main draws of Monogamy aren't really musical-- words always get prominence over melody. Simply put, if you get a spark out of idealizing your romantic failures by doing things like drunkenly Googling ex-girlfriends (as he does in great detail on "There Must Be Something I've Lost"), listening to Monogamy as a whole is like dousing yourself in gasoline. There's little poetry in Kasher's poisonous lyrics, he barely even bothers to rhyme them, and he'll ignore meter altogether if it means getting the last word in. But his directness can prove to be a bandage-ripping rush that gets the core of feelings that are repressed only to reveal themselves uglier than ever. "I am a grown man/ How did this happen? People are gonna start expecting more from me," is the first line Kasher sorta-sings and from there on out, it's something like if Arcade Fire's The Suburbs was written by Grinderman, middle-class, middle-age anxiety filtered through a prism of psychosexual panic....full text |
| Sputnikmusic |
| Tim Kasher and his bandmates in Cursive have been a respected force for thirteen years now in punk circles and, more importantly, indie circles as well. This indie respect is important to consider when analyzing some of Kasher's career choices, including his side project The Good Life and his new solo album, The Game Of Monogamy. The Good Life was originally started as a solo venture for Kasher to record songs that wouldn't fit on a Cursive album. Essentially, The Good Life ended up as an acoustic version of Cursive, mostly because no matter the name of the project, Tim Kasher is still Tim Kasher. Throughout his career, his intensely personal lyrics and the numerous sonic changes in Cursive's sound suggest that Kasher has always alternated between finding out who he is and running from that same discovery. The Good Life was a moderately well-received project that turned out some good songs, but after a certain point it didn't make much sense. By the time Album Of The Year was released in 2004, Cursive's The Ugly Organ had already been out for a year and had also made some serious waves. The songs were catchier, the production was better, Kasher's singing was more tuneful. Interesting then that there would be another Good Life album when Cursive's music had taken on more facets of a sound that was similar. Even so, Album Of The Year didn't seem out of place in the music scene of 2004. However, six years have passed since then and indie has changed a great deal, even just in this past year or two. The critical floodlights have illuminated folk music especially, with the advent of bands such as The Antlers and Bon Iver (of note is the fact that Kasher also spent time alone in the mountains to write, record, and produce The Game Of Monogamy). Kasher, then, is at a disadvantage in 2010. Being an established musician - especially one that has expressed so much about himself in such personal ways - the best thing he could do at this point was something different. He didn't. The Game Of Monogamy certainly has its good moments, which isn't surprising considering the name attached to it. But although there aren't any outright bad songs, there are plenty of head-scratchers. Kasher doesn't offer anything new here - not for himself and not for indie music as a whole. As such, there isn't much of a reason to keep listening. The album features some orchestrated parts performed by the Glacier National Symphony, but it amounts to little more than frills and fairy-tale type woodwinds. Horn sections are prominent as well, but you can find that in any Cursive album. And at any rate, the orchestration is completely overwhelmed by Kasher's baffling vocal performance. "A Grown Man" has two sections of a capella singing and anyone who has heard Kasher's voice knows that it isn't suited for that. "I'm Afraid I'm Gonna Die Here" is bracketed by hand claps, a surefire way to make any song more enjoyable, but the pace of the clapping is so fast and the length so extended that they just feel extraneous and shoehorned. Worse, the lyrics in the song reduce its characters to whiny, shallow caricatures of the people that Kasher has always been singing about. No amount of peppy horns and hand claps can forgive that. His lyrics have always been his strongest suit, and his writing on Domestica and The Ugly Organ still stands up to anything released since. But on The Game Of Monogamy, he is much older yet somehow handling his lyrics in a more immature manner. The discerning eye he displayed on songs like "Making Friends And Acquaintances" and the self-deprecating wit of songs like "Some Red Handed Sleight Of Hand" are essentially gone. More than anything, that is what makes this album such a disappointing release....full text |
| Consequenceofsound |
| Tim Kasher may’ve left the plains of the Midwest for Montana by way of L.A., but his pencil-sharp focus on the pangs of domesticity remains the consistent, driving force behind his songwriting. Not that a move out west necessitates a topical evolution, or that marriage hasn’t been tackled with brutally honest force in Hollywood before, but I’d speculated that Kasher’s sojourn might invite a narrative shift in his work, as if he’d said all there is to say about the false hope of romantic love. I was wrong. But, not completely. Yes, The Game of Monogamy is conceptually a scathing, doubtful, near-mocking account of the common commitment made between one man and one woman. (Sound familiar?) Lyrically, though, Kasher’s screenwriting abilities are paying off in droves: Unlike the vaguely drawn, obtuse men and women of his earlier work, the characters on this record put on a performance that unfolds over the course of an album, at once so in love with the prospect of a lifetime of togetherness and later resentful that they’d ever met. The record begins with a bittersweet string arrangement that gives way to harp and oboe, all creating a lamenting tension that’s not unlike the onset of a dramatic film. (I’ll do my best to keep the cinematic analogies to a minimum, but it’s clear Kasher meant for the record to have a filmic cadence). Though “Monogamy Overture”, with its Sufjan-like grandiosity, sets us up to expect a more finessed affair than the intelligent brashness of Cursive or the clean, simple lines of The Good Life, “A Grown Man” follows with some combination of the two. It’s a predictable rant against the cage of adult responsibilities set amongst raucous horns, fuzzy guitars, and propulsive drums that’s a bit of a letdown coming off of the glacial intro, but the ensuing tracks more than redeem this feeling; they make sense of it. “I’m Afraid I’m Gonna Die Here” starts off jubilantly, though not without a tinge of remorse, as its trumpets and breezy, jangly guitars set the stage for some of the most penetrating lyrics on the record. (This sentiment is, of course, relative considering how rife this collection is with solid prose). Kasher sings, “Love makes you lazy/You don’t ask questions anymore/You settle into the furniture/collecting cobwebs on the porch,” before he hints that the only way his character can save himself is to “write another chapter” before it’s too late. This quiet desperation is articulated once more in “No Fireworks”, wherein orchestral swells and morose keys back Kasher as he bellows, “I thought love was supposed to spill from our hearts,” as man and wife struggle to comprehend what the songwriter might suggest is the inevitable numbness of monogamous commitment. As on Cursive’s Ugly Organ, the drunken, dissonant sound of these songs could at times suggest a deficit of seriousness, but that would be a gross misunderstanding of the truth Kasher’s laboring to convey. If anything, the musical unease present alongside an otherwise vibrant chamber-pop sound is a subconscious translation of marital unrest, the crazed, unspeakable anxiety that torments all partners at one time or another. For its part, the brief, disorienting “Surprise, Surprise” documents this feeling brilliantly, as well....full text |
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