By Samuel Rubenfeld
Saddle Creek Records from Omaha, Neb. has long been a platform for Tim Kasher, whose penchant for break-up songs, both emotional and intellectual, was on full display when his band The Good Life performed at Bowery Ballroom Thursday night, Oct. 4.
Kasher began The Good Life as a solo side-project to his much louder and forceful act Cursive, whose electric guitars, loud yelps and sometimes-political lyrics greatly differ from that of the more serene sounding Good Life.
In both bands, Kasher acts the same: achingly flawed, sensitive, cornered and willing to lash out with precision. Keeping in character, he stands in the corner of the stage as he performs; and somehow he maintains the tremendous stage presence of a traditional frontman standing stage center.
His sensitivity transcends the Saddle Creek “sound,” which is widely known for its blurring of country, emo and folk. Many of the bands on the label are close friends, and many have been featured on each other’s records.
The Good Life’s lyrics are just as forlorn as Cursive’s-though they carry more emotional weight in their delicate delivery and in Kasher’s instability. During the song “Rest Your Head” off of the new album “Help Wanted Nights,” Kasher sarcastically asks, “Why are you so hard on yourself?”
He never really answers that question during the performance, which was replete with Kasher’s trademark yelp, scream and somber croon.
On “Nights,” the yelp takes a backseat to introspective lyrics that simmer on the brink of self-destruction. However, during the live show, fans often delighted in his tortured delivery, which wasn’t as distressed as it usually is. In fact, it was almost workman-like.
Kasher has a reputation for rambling and telling stories between songs during past performances, but there was almost none of that at the Bowery Ballroom this evening. Song followed song, with nary a “thank you,” until the end of the set, and again at the end of the encore.
Some fans tried bating Kasher into his reputed drunken tomfoolery. One yelled the cliché request “Free Bird,” to which Kasher just replied with a curt “F— you,” and continued to play his own songs.
That didn’t stop the fans from bellowing the lyrics line-by-line, often delivering them before Kasher did, making an almost karaoke-like atmosphere.
Opener Luke Temple, a local product from Brooklyn, featured a piercingly high-pitched falsetto vocal, which grew tenser with every song. He began with light-sounding acoustic songs, but spent half his set picking at a banjo, creating a droning sound very unfamiliar to the bluegrass genre to which the instrument owes its greatest debt. One song lasted seven minutes; the song featured his band playing over increasingly heavier drone, almost creating noise-rock-albeit with falsetto.
Omaha, Neb.’s The Good Life performed at Bowery Ballroom Thursday, Oct. 4. Members Stefanie Drootin, Ryan Fox, Tim Kasher and Roger Lewis delivered a good show to an excited audience. (myspace.com/thegoodlife)