Taking the long view, Cursive frontman Tim Kasher’s trajectory appears more like that of a Hollywood journeyman than a musician. His most renowned work could be described as "reality programming"—Domestica, The Ugly Organ, and Black Out played up the distasteful and compelling tics of their narcissistic leads to provide gripping conflict and perverse pleasure. His brief residency in Los Angeles coincided with his "screenwriting" period, Happy Hollow and Help Wanted Nights creating self-contained, fictional cities filled with multi-dimensional characters and their questionable motivations (the libretto-assisted *I Am Gemini *was a one-off in musical theater). Since releasing music under his own name in 2010, Kasher has shifted to "sitcoms"—as with The Game of Monogamy and Adult Film, the Good Life’s Everybody’s Coming Down softens his takes on modern life with gentle, PG-13 humor and a tremendous lessening of stakes.
Last year, Kasher turned 40 and toured behind a reissue of 2003's The Ugly Organ—a means of celebrating his most beloved record and reckoning with a "perspective shift" that made it difficult for him to relate to the guy who sang "The Recluse". And yet, present-day Kasher doesn’t achieve much distance from his brash, idealistic, and self-destructive former self, as the entirety of Everybody’s Coming Down puts the two in direct, unflattering comparison. While Kasher’s platitudes are presented as hard truths forged from experience, most of the time, it just sounds secondhand, scripts written by someone whose worldview has been shaped mostly by Cursive records.
There’s the inevitable talk of the futility of artistic expression—maybe Burst and Bloom's "Sink to the Beat" and The Ugly Organ's "Art Is Hard" were cynical, but there was convincing conflict between Kasher’s ego and his soul. The self-evisceration has given way to bellyaching on Everybody’s Coming Down. Rather than busting down the fourth wall and providing insider intel as to what happens in "The Troubadour’s Green Room", Kasher diffidently states what was always implied—he’s singing for any kind of attention and the only original thought results from two cliches soldered together as non sequitur—"I was chasing the big fish/ And all the wine and roses that come with it."
There’s the inevitable talk of the futility of human coupling. As with Happy Hollow's "Big Bang" and Mama, I'm Swollen's "Caveman", "How Small We Are" sees procreation as a zero sum game with lyrics not punched-up enough for laughs nor plain enough to be anything anyone might actually say ("propagating teensy human beings is a must"). And there’s the inevitable talk of the futility of human existence itself (most notably "Holy Shit"), with nearly every song finding some way to rehash the album title: "With the proper dosage I can feed my ego/ Once the buzz wears off I feel so hollow"; "Each ticker tape parade/ Is followed by a broom brigade"; "Every candle lit for every god or cancer kid/ Has flickered out and no one ever heard the prayer"; "If my body's a temple, it’s crumbling/ It can’t be renovated"; "Another carousel through the nothingsphere"; "Everybody’s riding the Ferris wheel/ And the pinnacle’s gorgeous...once the ride is done, they’re back in line again."
The increasing generality of Kasher’s lyrics is matched by the Good Life’s evolution into a tuneful, spirited, but extremely conventional indie rock outfit. The plodding, bashed-out alt of "Everybody" or the friskier pop-punk of "Holy Shit" and "Ad Nauseum" are hooky enough and they’re the kind of songs you could hear every hour, on the hour just walking through Philadelphia or Boston these days. Kasher’s sardonic tone at least prevents them from anonymity, though the true highlights happen when he takes a supporting role—bassist Stefanie Drootin-Senseney’s aqueous vocals lend "Diving Bell" an eerie psychedelia and when its lyrics fail, a worldless, harmonized moan on "The Troubadour’s Green Room" properly evokes the weariness of a veteran half-assing it on stage while looking over a half-filled venue.
Cursive had been increasingly shearing off the nettlesome vocal tics and jagged edges of their prickly post-hardcore, while the Good Life had developed from Kasher’s nocturnal synth-pop project to a hearty Midwestern rock act—the distinction between the two has been all but eliminated at this point. And that’s what makes Everybody’s Coming Down disappointing in a way that 2012's seventh Cursive album I Am Gemini or the 2013 solo album Adult Film never managed. The Good Life had once felt like Tim Kasher’s necessary relief from Being Tim Kasher. Not that 2002's Black Out or 2004's Album of the Year were lighthearted—but they could be cloaked in gothic hues or the assumption of fiction. But whether it’s Cursive or Good Life or Tim Kasher, it’s all sitcom at this point, his version of "Mulaney" or "Mr. Robinson"—a barely fictionalized, deadened version of his own life starring him. Or, "Shit Tim Says".
