Anyone who knows me knows that I like really, really sad music. I mean, I really enjoy sad music. To me, the only good love song is one where someone ends up shooting themselves, or a child get hits by a car, or someone is misunderstood, something like that. I enjoy sad music to the point that it's irritating to my friends. I'm the only person I know whose favorite instrument is "slow rhythms and lightly squeezed accordions." I wallow in musical angst as shamelessly as a stray dog wallows in stinky trash. People spontaneously weep when they enter my room, and my CD collection looks like the soundtrack of a "Wonder Years" episode, the one where Winnie dumps Kevin's pudgy ass like a bag of hot rocks.

So when I find an album that makes good, sad music, I get excited. I know that to be enthusiastic about depression isn't the coolest thing on earth, but any album can tune into that crying, dumped-after-the-prom part of the human psyche without coming off sappy or wimpy is about as rare as a lunar eclipse, so I reserve the right to smile at others' heartaches. That's why Tim Keegan and Departure Lounge's Out of Here (a fittingly dismal name) is such an extraordinary find for fellow mope-o-philes like myself. It's 11 tracks of heartbreaking indie-rock that never turns clownish or dumb, inducing foot-tapping, even as you're sobbing like an eight-year-old girl.

The thing that probably makes Tim Keegan's mastery of grief-rock sound so natural, is that he's British (or at least British sounding). The British, being from a rainy island where everyone talks funny and eats boiled food, know about some misery. And Departure Lounge makes it a point to carry on the long distinguished tradition of English misery in their music. Out of Here channels every classic, depressed English musical influence it can, from the Smiths to Nick Cave to low-key Pink Floyd all the way up to such current limey whiners as Blur and Radiohead.

Sad music is a dangerous genre to play around with. By its nature, it's very high-school and very juvenile in a "I'm in a pain that no one else understands" kind of way. The only way to make this kind of music without sounding completely pretentious is to (1) write good songs to back all the posturing and (2) not take yourself too seriously. Luckily, Out of Here has both problem areas taken care of. The songwriting, usually courtesy of Tim Keegan, is smart and incisive. Every song, although more or less about the same thing-- lost love-- is sad in its own unique way, giving the album a musical variety that most "sad" albums don't come close to achieving.

At times, Departure Lounge seem to be in danger of going overboard with the depression bit and selling out their credibility for cheap drama, but the music always comes in to squash these doubts. The best example of this is the melodramatically titled "Save Me From Happiness." Though the title is maybe a bit over the top, the song itself turns out to be a strange and wonderfully effective blend of Leonard Cohen-ish ballads and traditional Irish folksongs. Another album highlight, "Stay on the Line," features a guest appearance from ol' Robyn Hitchcock-- it's a dreamy ballad that somehow weds acoustic guitar, synthesizers and effects-laden vocals.

If you don't Out of Here's instrumental closer into account, the album ends on an up-note cheery enough to appear on a "Sesame Street" record. It's a song about large smiles, warmness and love called "We Got Everything We Need," and it's as repulsively happy as its title implies. Maybe for that reason, it's the album's one misstep. Maybe it's the fact that it comes out of nowhere and throws off the rhythm of an otherwise masterful record. Or maybe it's the fact that the damn song is performed as a campfire sing-a-long. More likely, it's a combination of all these things that make it worth skipping over entirely.

In closing, I just want to say: "Sad people of the world unite." We've lived under the tyranny of these smiling assholes for too damn long now. There are enough of us to band together and rule the world, if we can ever manage to get out of bed in the morning. Until then, we'll just all weep sourly into our pillows, the pleasant, tear-friendly music of Tim Keegan and Departure Lounge as our theme music.

-Steven Byrd