The best way to gauge someone's character is to watch how he or she deals with failure. Character spills out everywhere during those trials of the soul, whether he goes out with his head held high and preserving his dignity, or she goes down in a hail of recriminations, blame and general ill will.
With 30 Year Low, The Mendoza Line has a lot of failure on its plate: The album was written and recorded as Timothy Bracy and Shannon McArdle's marriage came unraveled, as cresting the 30th birthdays put the first shadows of middle-aged life on their psyches, their band failed to conquer the world and, as a byproduct of all of the above, The Mendoza Line decided to throw in the towel. 30 Year Low is crisis on all levels: personal, professional and relationships, and, to its credit, The Mendoza Line weathers its crisis with its head held high. It bows out with character.

Although it's anything but a storybook ending for McArdle and Bracy, 30 Year Low attempts to make sense of the thirtysomething crises in which the pair finds itself mired. And if the band doesn't really find any answers to its predicament -- probably not surprising considering the magnitude of its meltdown -- then it'll at least delve into the problems with a clear head. McArdle's tracks usually outshine Bracy's, both in lyrical sophistication and in delivery: Her clarion-call voice drowns out his poorly cultivated Dylanesque mumble, and her light-touch lyrics offer more enigmatic charm. "31 Candles" is a country-rock cruiser where McArdle airs the couple's dirty laundry -- infidelities in the rock world -- with a poise that's halfway between X's tales of divorce and Johnny and June Carter Cash's warts-and-all honesty. "Stepping on My Heels" reverts back to more conventional weepy alt-country as she ponders the possibilities of her own womanly powers, and the breezy "Since I Came" could be a lullaby for every relationship slipping away.

As compelling as those tracks are, Bracy hits one out of the park with the title track, taking classic-country picking and arrangements and coupling them with a conceit that links sagging stock prices to 30th-birthday depression. It's easily the album's finest track, and probably the best thing to bear the Mendoza Line name. The rest of his tunes aren't as enigmatic or conceptual: "Aspect of an Old Maid," a duet with McArdle, takes the band closer to classic-country songwriting than ever before, while "Love on Parade" is such a transparent Dylan rip-off that it's nearly embarrassing to hear.

30 Year Low comes bundled with an additional odds'n'sods album, Final Reflections of the Legendary Malcontent. A smattering of demos, B-sides and covers both obvious (Bracy touches on Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry") and surprising (McArdle rather awkwardly tries on Arab Strap's "Packs of Three"), the album's more of a final shoring up, clearing out accounts and liquidating assets of a musical divorce than anything more than a fans-only effort.

Divorce and band breakups are never pretty, but The Mendoza Line comes out of its darkest days admirably. Despite what the song says, breaking up isn't hard to do; coming out of it with this much dignity on both sides takes a lot of character though.