With The Good Life’s Black Out, Tim Kasher set out to capture something entirely different from his earlier efforts with Cursive as well as the debut release from The Good Life, Novena on a Nocturn (Better Looking Records – 2000). With upbeat, keyboard driven pop songs intermixed between sparse, vocal driven stories of drunken disappointment, The Good Life’s Black Out is a conceptually and musically rich album by five musicians that have blossomed from a solo effort into a full-time band.
After the success of Novena on a Nocturn, Kasher along with keyboardist Jiha Lee, drummer Roger Lewis, guitarist Landon Hedges and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Fox endeavored to create and arrange something larger in scope and density. The result is the moody, ever changing sound of Black Out, which has succeeded in capturing and showcasing the many facets of Tim Kasher’s songwriting ability.
Starting with a bare vocal melody and a tremulous guitar, Black Out traces tales of drunken phone calls, perfidious lovers, fickle relationships, and escapism through moody terrain, adding and subtracting an array of lush organic and electronic instrumentation. The standard guitar, bass and drums collide with drum machines, synthesizers, saxaphone, cello, accordian and vibraphone along with a host of other instruments to create a definitive Good Life sound. Black Out seamlessly flows from one track to the next – periodically glimpsing at the past as well as foreshadowing of things to come – while all along merely trying to recount the events of the previous night. Each track is a part that contributes to the scope and coherence of the record as a whole, progressing the listener further along toward the final “Black Out.”
The Good Life has its roots in Omaha’s Saddle Creek stable of bands, with members also playing in Cursive and Desaparecidos and having toured and recorded with Bright Eyes, The Faint, etc. The band has also toured and played shows with Superchunk, Rilo Kiley, Spoon, The Gloria Record, Arab Strap, and Cat Power, among others.