Monday, August 15, 2011

Tim Kasher - Bigamy: More Songs From The Monogamy Sessions


01 No Harmony
02 Opening Night
03 A Bluer Sea
04 Lilybird And The Trust Fund Kid
05 Rabbit, Run
06 The Jessica
07 Trees Keep Growing

Every album singer/songwriter/rocker Tim Kasher releases has a completely different feel than the last. Even within each of his projects (hard-rocking Cursive and heartbreakingly somber The Good Life), the music varies from album to album. The one thing that has stayed consistent are his poetic and, at times, brutally honest lyrics. Though as the years have pushed on, Kasher has moved a little further away from frankness. That is until last year’s solo effort, The Game of Monogamy. Monogamy is Kasher at his most honest and truthful, and the songs on his latest EP, Bigamy: More Songs from the Monogamy Sessions, are a harsh continuation of that mind-set.

Album opener “No Harmony” is a building, rolling song musically and a stark naked unveiling lyrically. Throughout the album, Kasher is pretty self-effacing but never more so than on this song. After singing about possibly going down to the local bar to flirt with some pretty, young girls, Kasher shamelessly admits that they are out of his league—calling himself “Mr. Peter Pan” and saying that those girls “live in Never Never Land” with his sardonic refrain, “Uh huh.” He follows that with “I’m better off with a girl my age/A spinster or a divorcee, uh huh/Well here I am, a divorcee too, with a pot belly and a jagged tooth, uh huh.” If you love watching an artist completely bare themselves, you have found the mother lode.

The rest of the album isn’t quite as uncomfortably honest as the first track. Kasher keeps things at arm’s length most of the time on tracks like the bouncy “A Bluer Sea” and the slower “Lilybird and the Trust Fund Kid”, but he does continuously touch on the topics of broken relationships and life as a thirtysomething. It’s refreshing to watch an artist not just stick to his usual ideas, both musically and lyrically, and allow himself to grow up. It’s awkward to watch a singer, as he gets older, still singing about life as a young buck against the world. Kasher acknowledges the new challenges of his age and sings about them with the same candor as he did when he was younger.

Bigamy is being released as a tour and internet-only EP, and it’s definitely one to check out. The seven songs (six originals and a cover of fellow Saddle Creeker Azure Ray’s “Trees Keep Growing”) are growers that might take a few listens to wrap around, but the payoff is definitely worth it...www.consequenceofsound.net

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