The Good Life Help Wanted Nights

Day 1: I receive The Good Life's Help Wanted Nights for review. Although unfamiliar with their work, I was interested to hear them - Tim Kasher, the main man in the band, is also the leader of Cursive and friend of Conor Oberst, and they're on Saddle Creek, which is a pretty reliable brand. However, I receive another CD to review at the same time. I give them both a listen. Being the less instant of the two, I put The Good Life to one side for the time being.

Day 2: Having dealt with the other album, I decide to crack on with my review of Help Wanted Nights, so I give the album a listen while I do the crossword. I'm pondering six across "Old dictator grabbing butt of biggest weapon (7)" when I realise that the album finished about half an hour ago. I put the crossword down and press play again.

Day 3: I return to my review of Help Wanted Nights. While I was re-listening to the album the previous day, I seemed to get absorbed by an emery board and my fingernails. I come to type away about the album, but my perfectly manicured nails hover lifelessly above the keyboard. I can't recall a single thing about my subject. I put the album on again.

Day 4: I have a vague recollection that the first song is a kind of generic Americana, the likes of which Lullaby for the Working Classes or Clem Snide were doing almost a decade ago. I'm not really sure where I dragged either act's name from, but both artists shine like beacons relative to The Good Life in my recall. I sit down in my immaculate bedroom, tidied fastidiously, with every ounce of my attention yesterday while listening to Help Wanted Nights. I put the album on again and try to review the album, this time writing about each song as it comes.

Day 5: I woke up yesterday evening with a crick in my neck, a keyboard pattern imprinted on my face, and 104 pages full of "jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj".

Day 6: Despair sets in. No matter how many times I listen to Help Wanted Nights, I can garner no greater impression from it than it sounds sort of like it should be played barely audibly in the background of a bar scene in a sentimental road movie about a pair of tentative lesbians traversing Middle America dealing with prejudice and their own insecurities. Anne Hathaway, in a risky role for her, and Clea Duvall, in an attempt at a breakthrough, should play the protagonists...at some point they'll listen to Ani Di Franco while they have an argument, and the finale will be marked by a guest appearance from the Indigo Girls. That's right, a film that I have invented in which the music might be played has got more substance than the actual album, and it's not a good film.

Day 7: I call Hollywood with my idea, I find out that Whoopi Goldberg and Drew Barrymore were in a very similar film several years ago, Boys on the Side, and yes the Indigo Girls did guest star. I realise I still haven't reviewed The Good Life's album, but decide it is so unremarkably generic Americana there is not much point in my doing so. There's not a single stand out track, good or bad; and the likes of this album have been released, oh, a million times over, in the past 8 years - it's not bad, not good, just a drop in a calm, tepid, flat ocean. I'm giving the album 5 out of 10... when I write 10 read indifference.