Best known as the frontman for Billboard 200-charting Midwestern outfits Cursive and the Good Life, Nebraska-born indie rocker Tim Kasher also makes literate and heavily thematic solo music that splits the difference between theatrical rock, chamber pop, and intimate indie singer/songwriter fare. He made his solo debut a full 15 years into band life, with The Game of Monogamy in 2010. Kasher continued to wrangle with the realities of adulthood into the next decade, including on his fourth solo album, 2022's Middling Age. Timothy J. Kasher grew up in Omaha alongside fellow crooner and close friend Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes (Oberst references Kasher in the Bright Eyes tune "Nothing Gets Crossed Out"). He formed Cursive in 1995 with guitarist Stephen Pederson, bassist Matt Maginn, and drummer Clint Schnase. Early releases such as 1997 debut album Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes spotlighted Kasher's powerful voice along with the group's consistently thundering rhythm section and jagged guitars. As they shifted from their emo beginnings toward a more refined and intricate material across the 2000s, including on the Billboard 200-charting Happy Hollow (2006) and Mama, I'm Swollen (2009), Kasher formed and maintained the Good Life with a revolving set of contributors. Debuting in 2000 with Novena on a Nocturn, The Good Life eventually cracked the Billboard 200 as well, with 2007's Help Wanted Nights, the project's fourth LP and third for Cursive's label, Saddle Creek. In 2009, Kasher hunkered down in a Whitefish, Montana studio to record his debut solo album, Game of Monogamy, a self-penned, recorded, and produced collection of intricate, orchestral indie rock. It arrived on Saddle Creek in 2010. He followed it a year later with the EP Bigamy: More Songs from the Monogamy Sessions. Cursive then landed on the Billboard charts again with 2012's I Am Gemini before Kasher released Adult Film, an album of synth-reinforced indie rock, in 2013. The Good Life re-emerged in 2015 with the Saddle Creek-issued Everybody's Coming Down before all of Kasher's projects parted ways with the label. Returning to an orchestrated palette, Kasher's third full-length solo release, No Resolution, appeared in March 2017 on 15 Passenger, a label owned and operated by Kasher and then-Cursive bandmates Matt Maginn and Ted Stevens. The album's 15 songs doubled as a soundtrack supporting the narrative of a film by the same name, which marked Kasher's debut as a writer/director. Cursive returned in back-to-back years with Vitriola (2018) and Get Fixed (2019), both of which failed to crack the U.S. album chart, though Vitriola reached the independent Top 30. Kasher then focused on preparing material for his fourth solo album. Issued when the songwriter was 46, Middling Age arrived on 15 Passenger in April 2022. ~ Marcy Donelson & James Christopher Monger, Rovi

Tim Kasher, Darren Hanlon

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