The Good Life - 'Album Of The Year' (Saddle Creek)
3/5
By: Tim Dellow
'The first time that I met her, I was throwing up in the ladies room stall.'
That's where it started. The album and the relationship. As far as opening lines go it's hard to fault. He'd write the album of the year for the love of his life. But like the relationship itself, it's an inevitable failure.
Released on the label owned by Conor 'Bright Eyes' Oberst, it sounds a lot like, well, Bright Eyes. Self-deprecation city. And I wouldn't mind, if it weren't for a line in the astounding opener; I was 'under the influence of the drunken romantics... I had Bukowski on my mind.'
Now, if there's one thing that I've learned from Henry Chinaski, it's that we men may be bad, but the women are always worse. We drink and drug ourselves to death and wallow in self-pity soundtracked by Leonard Cohen records. But why do we do it? Because of the f**king women that made us feel that way.
But this guy's got it wrong. He's placed the women who ditched him on some kinda pedestal and written the stalker's album of the year. It was his fault that they lived in a shitty apartment, his fault she cut herself, his fault that she was driven to despair by his complete dependency on her (only the last one of these is true).
Take a classic female break-up album by PJ Harvey: 'You're not rid of me... Don't you wish you'd never met her.' Powerful, strong, and f**king sexy.
Whereas we men, apparently, just whine.
In the one moment of the album in which there's a shred of a backbone, a shard of resilience in the phrase 'I'm not your prisoner' in 'Inmates', he gets a woman to sing it!
Imagine this was written for you. It wouldn't make you think about taking him back because of its poetic romantic sentiment. It would make you want to take out a restraining order and change your identity.
If creep-rock is your thing (chances are you're a sixth-former who scribbles Manics lyrics on your form journal and fantasises about sleeping with (but NOT 'f**king') the girl next door, who's your friend but nothing more), then you'll love it. Otherwise stand up for yourself, and have some self-respect. Because believe it or not, girls like that.
Artists in this article: The Good Life
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