Tim Kasher at the Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, MI
Boy, when Tim Kasher gets stuck on a subject, it is hard to get him off of it. He built his whole career with Cursive and The Good Life crooning about those ugly parts of life that most people don’t even want to talk about. Failed marriage, drinking too much, having sex with strangers, losing your faith, they’re all conversation staples, common ice-breakers for Kasher. And on Sunday night at the Blind Pig, Kasher dove into it again, and again, and again and again touring behind his solo release The Game of Monogamy.
I don’t want you to think this whole review is going to bash Kasher – it isn’t. Kasher played a good set that exploded into near-greatness with what he called “a proper encore.” What surprised me even more, was that the guy who moved hundreds of thousands of records with Cursive only managed to bring about 30 or so people to the college town. But the people that were there were into it, and they were the most into it when Kasher was playing stuff from his Cursive or Good Life albums. The show sported the typical Kasher fans – mostly girls with weird dyed hair, “snakebite” piercings, and their most important accessory – the word-for-word memorization of any song that Kasher slipped out.
Kasher was sipping from a mug all night. I wonder what was in it.
Kasher put on a show, though. Right from the get-go, I was pretty sure that Kasher was pretty sloshed from some of the faces he was making, but I wasn’t able to confirm this with the way he executed his songs. Kasher’s one-of-a-kind howl was in top form, I don’t think I heard him hit a bad note all night. He held down all of the guitar parts on a single acoustic guitar. He was backed by a cellist that sometimes played bass, a keyboard player (who also plays with Cursive, if my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me…) and Erin Tate, the drummer from Minus the Bear. I had no complaints about his live band, other than the fact that the cellist seemed to be a much better cellist than bassist. The guy showed amazing proficiency with the instrument and had no problem replicating Gretta Cohn’s Ugly Organ parts for “Driftwood: A Fairy Tale,” but when he switched to bass, he seemed uneasy and it looked like he had a rough time getting through the songs.
But the part that was a little troubling for me, was the hour-plus of subject matter that seems like a theme on record, but in concert seems like a broken-record – follow? He makes art out of the ugly thoughts we think when sitting at the dinner table with our family, or sitting at the bar all alone. It is the most personal kind of art, and his lyrics seem to come from a poetry major with a dark sense of humor who had about three drinks too many. But this time, he’s spilling the beans on getting old and settling down. About worrying about drinking too much and fucking up someone’s life. Yeah, I appreciate Kasher’s honesty, but as he was making his way through The Game of Monogamy’s tracks, I found myself kind of shrugging. So what?
I’ve listened to the album a few times after the show and, I’m still feeling this way. The work honestly isn’t Kasher’s best. The lyrics just didn’t jump out at me (or hold on, kicking and screaming) the way they did the first few times I heard The Ugly Organ, Happy Hollow, or Album of the Year. The hooks are gone that explored Kasher was an asshole for making money off of his art, or meeting a future love while hurling in the ladies’ room. The Game of Monogamy‘s tracks just felt like diet-Kasher, and this surprises me coming from someone who I thought had a clear strangle-hold on his craft. His characters are predictable now, they want to be in love, or at least pretend they’re in love. They’ll do terrible things to hurt their partner. They are bored and restless in suburbia. They still drink too much. But, overall, the effort feels genuine and has its good moments. I’m Afraid I’m Gonna Die Here was by far the highlight of the night, overshadowing crowd-pleasers like “The Recluse” off of Cursive’s The Ugly Organ. Overall, I had a great time at the show, and I did like Kasher’s set. But the new stuff is about exciting as, well, monogamy.
