Saddle Creek
2004
Album Of The Year
About This Album
The Good Life follow up the excellent Lovers Need Lawyers EP with their best record yet and maybe the best indie rock record of 2004. Album of the Year is a concept record of sorts, one song for each month, each song a heart-rending essay of love found, lost, broken, or ripped apart, ranging from the puppy love "Album of the Year" to the depressed, resigned-to-loss "A New Friend" and "Two Years This Month." Tim Kasher has found his voice, and almost all traces of previous Robert Smith-isms are gone; instead, he whispers, hollers, cajoles, and confesses in a voice stripped of artifice and plugged right into the listener's soul. The record is perfectly constructed. Based around acoustic guitars, the songs are colored in with keyboards, various percussion instruments, and glockenspiel, and made dramatic and often breathtaking. Songs like "You're Not You" and "Album of the Year" are pocket epics, created out of atmosphere and dynamic shifts in mood. Most of the songs are relatively downbeat, but a few, like "Lovers Need Lawyers," show that the band can write snappy pop songs as well. Kasher's lyrics are incisive, personal, and about as honest-sounding as rock music can get.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2,5,6 and 7)

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Disc 2

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