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EXCLUSIVE: First Song from Cursive’s Tim Kasher

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Tim Kasher has never been idle for long in his career, slinging back and forth between his two bands, Cursive and the Good Life, both stalwarts of Omaha, Nebraska’s vaunted indie scene. Now, for the first time ever, he’s putting out a solo album, called The Game of Monogamy (out Oct. 5). Hear “Cold Love,” the first leak from the record, below!

Written over a year-and-a-half span starting in Santa Monica, CA, and ending in Whitefish, MT, the album offers the most straight-ahead rock’n’roll Kasher’s ever produced, a far cry from the spastic wails of Cursive and more akin to the bold yet experimental guitar pop of Jon Brion.

“I was writing fairly small, sad songs, acoustic-based, when it occurred to me, ‘Why not let the music be big and bombastic?'” Kasher tells SPIN.com. “That’s what David Bowie would do, right? Not sure how big and bombastic it ever became, but it did get me out of the little guy with a little guitar mentality, opening the music up to bigger arrangements.”

Kasher also felt liberated by being in total control of every instrument, and “accomplishing a new chapter in my life that’s not called Cursive or the Good Life.” (Fans of Cursive, worry not: The band is just on a between-albums break.)

“It’s a minor detail, but it’s gotten me pretty excited, creatively speaking, to start over like this,” he says. “I imagine about 90 percent of these songs would not have made it into a Cursive practice.”

Thematically, The Game of Monogamy is loaded with many musings on relationships and “Cold Love” is no exception.

“Mostly, [it’s about] really boring sex, couples who have run out of steam in their relationships, whose sex life is reduced to going through the motions,” he says of the song, a taut rocker laced with a bit of brass, strings, and keys, that laments a “vanilla existence.”

What do you think of Tim Kasher’s solo jam? Download it below and sound off in the comments.

LISTEN: Tim Kasher, “Cold Love”

DOWNLOAD: Tim Kasher, “Cold Love”