music-db.de
C
Solo-Künstler
Cass McCombs
1 Album
Biografie
His hair licks up and about in dark, bedheaded waves. He's sporting the kind of rough-knit sweater you kind of imagine Papa Hemingway might've worn when out chasing that great big fish, faded navy, loose fitting, chew marks and wear strains worn with a casual pride. Part of you hopes that Cass sees the Hemingway connection too, because Cass too is a fine story teller, a young man who's spent most of his adolescence like John Steinbeck in My Travels With Charlie, criss-crossing America, finding places where he fit in, or where the extent to which he didn't fit in fascinated him. Maybe some of those adventures are contained somewhere in his wonderful, wonderful songs, a prodigious bounty so far, taking in his debut EP Not The Way, his first album A, and now his new, second album, PREfection. Certainly, McCombs himself is unwilling to tell us which verses are fact and which are fiction.
"I don't actually want my biography to contain much in the way of actual biographical information," he explains, an interesting way to approach what is supposed to be his press biography. But you can kind of understand his reluctance at offering over his life for us all to judge and pick over for clues to unlock his mind. His songs ring out like perfectly constructed short stories, like you might imagine Raymond Carver penning, all deft details and delicate washes of emotion. There are stray ends that need tying up, an intriguing obliqueness, but Cass wants to keep the veil in place. All the better to lure you in, perhaps, but he's uncomfortable with laying himself open to second-guessing and invasive questioning.
He likes the idea of wrong-footing people, of frustrating them - that's for sure. A song like 'Aids In Africa', the Velvets-y shuffle with its title as its elliptical, impenetrable chorus, is a case in question, Cass preferring to leave its provocative issue emotionally blank, his intention in writing the song remaining obscured, but a world of woe resting upon the shoulders of his weary, fading vocal. The same qualities surface on 'I Went To The Hospital', the rich, dramatic opening track, sublime in Cass's dolorous, windswept tones, but still, somehow, teasingly distant, like his mind's somewhere else, somewhere dark and distracting.
"Put something in there about religion," he says, midway through a bunch of great stories that I can't repeat here (why not ask him about them yourself?). But he doesn't say what. He just smiles, like he knows he's said something perhaps unexpected.
PREfection is a record of swooning romance, with a pristine guitar pop heart. It was recorded quickly, soon after A, and Cass himself wishes he'd been able to spend more time on it. But PREfection is an album which makes an advantage of the way it sounds - the mood is a timeless one of slumbering, echo-y drums, ghostly organ drones, reverb-shuddering guitars, and Cass's vocal taking the foreground, towering with an understated emotive quality, either whispering in your ear or losing itself in its own melodies.
It's another shift of character for Cass, different musicians and different moods, different reference points. Think the fog-laden melancholia of the 80s raincoat bands, Echo & The Bunnymen and their ilk, only played out with a gentler touch, a more reined-in sensibility making a virtue of its frailties. Dank, atmospheric dirges underscored by pounding Motown drums, and the sweetest of melodies. It's noisier than before, too, drones and distortion and downcast riffs writhing in among the softer, more introspective material, new moods rising to the surface. It's subtly, confidently audacious. It's a songwriter's record, a tribute to the craft. It's a classic guitar record, Cass playing Marr to his own Morrissey and chiming out the scuffed, soulful heroics and even quoting his own 'Aids In Africa' in the tranquil coda to 'Tourist Woman'. It's a record where a crashing Sonic Youth scraperama can give way to the kind of candy floss-heady pop you might expect from New Order at their prime ('Sacred Heart', just begging for heavy radioplay). And while there are echoes of a cool canon of influences shimmering through PREfection, Cass never sounds in thrall to his heroes, finding himself in these songs, sounding like no-one else.
Certainly, you might get to know Cass better over the 40 or so minutes of PREfection than sitting across from him in a pub, separated by a Dictaphone he'll ask remain switched off throughout. The mystery hasn't harmed his career any so far, Not The Way and A catching press acclaim wherever there were ears smart enough to appreciate them. A similar fate doubtless awaits PREfection, an album of loose ends that beg to be explored.
"I don't actually want my biography to contain much in the way of actual biographical information," he explains, an interesting way to approach what is supposed to be his press biography. But you can kind of understand his reluctance at offering over his life for us all to judge and pick over for clues to unlock his mind. His songs ring out like perfectly constructed short stories, like you might imagine Raymond Carver penning, all deft details and delicate washes of emotion. There are stray ends that need tying up, an intriguing obliqueness, but Cass wants to keep the veil in place. All the better to lure you in, perhaps, but he's uncomfortable with laying himself open to second-guessing and invasive questioning.
He likes the idea of wrong-footing people, of frustrating them - that's for sure. A song like 'Aids In Africa', the Velvets-y shuffle with its title as its elliptical, impenetrable chorus, is a case in question, Cass preferring to leave its provocative issue emotionally blank, his intention in writing the song remaining obscured, but a world of woe resting upon the shoulders of his weary, fading vocal. The same qualities surface on 'I Went To The Hospital', the rich, dramatic opening track, sublime in Cass's dolorous, windswept tones, but still, somehow, teasingly distant, like his mind's somewhere else, somewhere dark and distracting.
"Put something in there about religion," he says, midway through a bunch of great stories that I can't repeat here (why not ask him about them yourself?). But he doesn't say what. He just smiles, like he knows he's said something perhaps unexpected.
PREfection is a record of swooning romance, with a pristine guitar pop heart. It was recorded quickly, soon after A, and Cass himself wishes he'd been able to spend more time on it. But PREfection is an album which makes an advantage of the way it sounds - the mood is a timeless one of slumbering, echo-y drums, ghostly organ drones, reverb-shuddering guitars, and Cass's vocal taking the foreground, towering with an understated emotive quality, either whispering in your ear or losing itself in its own melodies.
It's another shift of character for Cass, different musicians and different moods, different reference points. Think the fog-laden melancholia of the 80s raincoat bands, Echo & The Bunnymen and their ilk, only played out with a gentler touch, a more reined-in sensibility making a virtue of its frailties. Dank, atmospheric dirges underscored by pounding Motown drums, and the sweetest of melodies. It's noisier than before, too, drones and distortion and downcast riffs writhing in among the softer, more introspective material, new moods rising to the surface. It's subtly, confidently audacious. It's a songwriter's record, a tribute to the craft. It's a classic guitar record, Cass playing Marr to his own Morrissey and chiming out the scuffed, soulful heroics and even quoting his own 'Aids In Africa' in the tranquil coda to 'Tourist Woman'. It's a record where a crashing Sonic Youth scraperama can give way to the kind of candy floss-heady pop you might expect from New Order at their prime ('Sacred Heart', just begging for heavy radioplay). And while there are echoes of a cool canon of influences shimmering through PREfection, Cass never sounds in thrall to his heroes, finding himself in these songs, sounding like no-one else.
Certainly, you might get to know Cass better over the 40 or so minutes of PREfection than sitting across from him in a pub, separated by a Dictaphone he'll ask remain switched off throughout. The mystery hasn't harmed his career any so far, Not The Way and A catching press acclaim wherever there were ears smart enough to appreciate them. A similar fate doubtless awaits PREfection, an album of loose ends that beg to be explored.