Tomorrow is the official drop date for the new Good Life album, Help Wanted Nights, but already there have been quite a few reviews published on the interweb about the disc, as well as interviews with Good Life frontman Tim Kasher. Here’s just a few of the more interesting pieces:

— AV Club‘s “Random Rules” featured Kasher’s take on a handful of songs that I assume were selected randomly from his iPod (read it here). Among them, The Nation of Ulysses’ “S.S. Exploder,” Elvis Costello’s “Senior Service” and The Cure’s “Let’s Go to Bed,” which prompted a discussion on how The Cure influenced (or failed to influence) Kasher’s music. “I first started The Good Life because I couldn’t get away from the Robert Smith comparison all the time,” Kasher said, “but anything I’ve done that people consider blatantly Cure-ish hasn’t been that blatant at all from my end.”

— Synthesis.net has a nice Q&A with Kasher (it’s right here) where he briefly talks about the screenplay (that the album sort of acts as a soundtrack for), living in Southern California (“Having moved to LA, if anything, has compelled me to want to move to Alaska more than ever. I just wanna detach myself from this excessive populace and this excessive economy.”), his writing process (for both music and screen) and perceptions that his music can be too dour (“I’m not like a Trent Reznor person; I’m not some weird goth thing. I actually try to maintain a very positive vibe overall, and I’ve always been that way. I think that manages to find its way into the records that I write. It usually comes up around the end of the album [laughs].”). Good stuff.

— The always-anticipated Pitchfork review (here) gave the disc a 7.0 rating, summing it up with: “Help Wanted Nights finally finds him (Kasher) challenging himself again, imposing constraints and seeing how well he can work within them.” Overall, a rather tepid (and not terribly informative) review.

I suspect we’ll be seeing lots more Kasher/Good Life interviews and reviews in the coming days.

As I mentioned last Friday, this is going to be a busy week. It starts tonight with Dave Dondero, Mal Madrigal and Brad Hoshaw at The Slowdown. Show starts at 9 p.m. and costs $8. Meanwhile, over at The Waiting Room, it’s Spring Gun opening for Black Moth Super Rainbow, a band that’s been opening for Flaming Lips and will soon be warming up the stage for Aesop Rock. $7, 9 p.m.

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