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Album Details

• Artist: The Good Life
• Album: Help Wanted Nights
• Label: Saddle Creek
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: kev_stev on 2007-08-27

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Tim Kasher has been very prolific as of late: his band, Cursive, has been on a worldwide tour for their album Happy Hollow over the past year, playing show after show, festival after festival, making it seemingly impossible for Kasher's side project, The Good Life, to have any time to create a new album. However, that is not the case, as The Good Life's fourth album, Help Wanted Nights, is scheduled for a September 11th release, marking the band's fourth full release since their 2000 inception. An aberration from previous releases, Help Wanted Nights is more of a soundtrack to a screenplay Kasher has been writing--I told you he's prolific--rather than a conceptual, storytelling album. The songs are focused around characters that a character meets in a small town bar, stated Kasher, and are less grandiose than past Good Life songs; instead, they stayed close to their song’s first incarnations, evoking sentiments of desperation and sadness through the sparse instrumentations of acoustic guitars, washed out cymbals, and soft vocals.

Beginning with the slow moving acoustic track, "On the Picket Fence," Kasher proves that his brilliantly melancholic lyricism has not changed with the band’s stripped down sound, singing, "Things are good, we should take a Polaroid, a memento before the moment's destroyed. We constantly bicker, these flickering moods, ‘til we're hardly making any sense: either you love me or you leave me, don't you leave me on this picket fence." Towards the end of the song it seems like there would be a Good Life-esque crescendo, as the guitar ascends and the drum tempo picks up, however, proving that this is not another Album of the Year, the acoustic guitar winds down again, ending with a deeply ominous chord, almost as an answer to Kasher's "love me or leave me" ultimatum.

Following the opening acoustic track is the more, dare I say, up-tempo "A Little Bit More," showcasing the implorations of a character that wants more than what was a one night stand with a girl. "Heartbroke" then follows, the shortest track on this ten song album, and also the album's single, which dissects a bitter break up with contempt and sarcasm, as Kasher's character bitterly states, "Yeah, I'm sure your heart is breaking too." This album is full of highlights: "You Don't Feel Like Home to Me" holds the first crescendo of the album, as Kasher ardently screams, "So why can't you call me home?" Also, "So Let Go" holds the songs most lamenting track; a softly spoken song in Kasher's deepest, sober voice played over reverb-driven guitars, it slows the album’s tempo down as Help Wanted Nights’ last song beings. Closing the album is "Rest Your Head," a ten minute orchestral track that creates a powerful contrast to the dynamics of “So Let Go”’s late night lamentations, exploding into a climatic breakdown of electric guitars and organs. Kasher's repetitive, imploring final line, "Just rest your head," simplistically epitomizes the entire album, delivering the imagery and struggles of a character trying to find stability and comfort with a girl, passionately begging her to put her head down in bed with him.

Though this album is intentionally disparate, the album still has a conceptual feel to it, and, unlike many pretensions that come with the infamous concept album, Help Wanted Nights isn't bloated or overdone. It is a simplistic, moody album where the characters are individuals that come together to create the album's cohesiveness: combining Kasher's sorrows, yearnings, and indignations into ten tracks of melancholic brilliance. This departure from previous albums ultimately proves to be a success because, though the album may initially seem slow moving, it allowed Kasher to delve into new issues and struggles, to avoid the creation of hackneyed musical sounds and motifs while keeping his endearing, heartfelt emotions as strong and as evident as ever.

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