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Telltale hearts
The Good Life and Azure Ray
BY JONATHAN PERRY

With little fanfare and no warning, singer Tim Kasher picks out a few notes on electric guitar and directs a weary accusation at himself. "You try too hard for the perfect beginning/You’re so let down when the beauty starts fading/Once beaming with confidence/Now brooding with doubt/Pack those pictures away and black out." The words, from the first of three scattered pieces called "Black Out," are the centerpiece of a new album of the same name by the Good Life, a Nebraska-based quintet who have released one previous album for Saddle Creek, the pop-oriented indie label based in Omaha that’s also home to Bright Eyes, Desaparecidos, and Kasher’s regular band, Cursive.

On Black Out, Kasher’s weighted words introduce an album that sounds as if it’s finished before it’s begun. Which seems to be the point in the sense that the title refers to a black out of the alcoholic sort. Loaded and alone in the dead of night, Kasher plunges himself headlong into a fever-dream of distorted imagery, vague memories, and blurry conversations with faceless strangers, mistrustful lovers, and the singer’s own corroded psyche.

At first, it might appear that Kasher’s bucking for the Mark Eitzel bronze barstool, or wresting his crown of gloom from Leonard Cohen. But much of Black Out is shot through with colorful melodies that illuminate the songs like patches of sunlight scattered by a stained-glass window. There’s a wider instrumental palette here than one might expect from the pitch-black resignation of the singer’s words — the band doesn’t skimp on embellishing Kasher’s journey with synths, vibraphone, cello, and oboe. And tracks like "Some Bullshit Escape" and "Off the Beaten Path" recall the tumultuous landscapes of Neutral Milk Hotel, where smeared watercolors blend into sepia-toned backdrops.

Black Out is certainly a concept album in that it’s a vivid portrait of a hazy life in turmoil, with the singer’s soul-scarring desolation and nerve-wracked fragility acting as the threads that loosely bind one song to the next. Kasher’s voice is a wilderness of jagged peaks and broken valleys, part Robert Smith yelp and Stephin Merritt mope. The daylight that occasionally breaks into view brings postmortem reflection (the frank self-assessment of "Early Out the Gate") and redemptive, if fleeting, hope (the relatively upbeat sentiments of "I Am an Island"). But even the lighter moments betray a certain struggle, as Kasher grasps at happiness before succumbing to the inevitable onset of less settled emotions.

The Athens-based duo Azure Ray, featuring Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor of the sunny pop outfit Little Red Rocket (who released their last CD on Boston’s Monolyth label), not only share a label with Kasher’s the Good Life, but they also seem to have caught a bad case of his ennui. Their new EP, November (Saddle Creek), transmutes country songwriter Townes Van Zandt’s "For the Sake of the Song" into a drowsy, Mazzy Star–like dirge featuring crushed-velvet vocals and rainy-day undertones. The closest Azure Ray get to cowboy country is pining by candlelight à la the Cowboy Junkies, and it’s an approach that clearly complements the lonely, late-night vibe Fink and Taylor are aiming for here.

Like the Good Life, Azure Ray’s hushed melodies and gently glistening guitars are a bit of a departure from the harder-hitting, emo-leaning material usually associated with Saddle Creek. But the austere touches of cello — courtesy of Nirvana’s In Utero cellist Kera Schaley — and filigreed acoustic guitar that open the EP’s title track are certainly in keeping with the label’s emphasis on emotional drama. And Fink and Taylor’s songs of self-doubt — with midnight confessions such as "I was afraid to be alone/Now I’m scared that’s how I like to be" — are as stark and affecting as anything coming out of the Omaha indie scene.

When Saddle Creek’s franchise player — namely, Bright Eyes wunderkind Conor Oberst — met the duo in Athens and began hanging out with them, he was, reportedly, so stirred by their self-titled full-length debut on the Athens-based WARM label that he played the disc for anyone and everyone within earshot back home. That’s all it took to build the bridge from Athens to Omaha that got Azure Ray invited to open for Bright Eyes’ West Coast tour last year, and to join the Good Life on a tour that hits the Middle East this Sunday, February 17.

The most powerful moment on November comes on "I Will Do These Things," a baleful meditation on betrayal that’s either a razing indictment of a former lover, a bitter vow to one’s self, or both. "So your heart doesn’t know where mine’s been," whispers the singer as a few piano figures scatter about. "I’ll never let your heart go where mine’s been/I’ll never let your heart know where mine’s been." And that’s when we hear the beating of the singer’s telltale heart, in the distance at first but coming closer with each thump.

The Good Life and Azure Ray perform upstairs at the Middle East Sunday, February 17. Call (617) 864-EAST for details.

Issue Date: February 14 - 21, 2002
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