CASS McCOMBS: A (2003)
1) I Went To The Hospital; 2)
Bobby, King Of Boys Town; 3) What Isn't Nature; 4) AIDS In Africa; 5) A
Comedian Is Someone Who Tells Jokes; 6) Gee, It's Good To Be Back Home; 7) Meet
Me Here At Dawn; 8) When The Bible Was Wrote; 9) My Pilgrim Dear; 10) Bedding
Down Post-Xmastime; 11) My Master.
Oh no, not another modern day American
singer-songwriter. Having stuck around both the West and the East Coast for
several years, and eventually being picked up by some tiny record label in
Baltimore or somewhere, and having also had the distinction to be one of the
very last discoveries by John Peel before the radio waves went silent, Cass
McCombs finally got around to recording his first LP in 2003 — one that he
called A, out of humble respect
either for a twenty-three year old record by Jethro Tull or the anonymous
creator of the Latin alphabet. As far as I understand, nobody even noticed it
back at the time. How could they? With a title like that, it'll easily slip
through even all the most advanced search engines.
Fortunately, now, in retrospect, we are all
entitled to its pleasures, because it does indeed happen to be one of the
finest singer-songwriter albums of the year 2003, and maybe even of the entire
decade, and, heck, who knows? it's getting darn hard and darner harder for anybody to come out with an amazing
singer-songwriter album these days. But somehow, McCombs, with the help of his
largely unknown backing team (the only player I know is guitarist Chris Cohen,
formerly of Deerhoof), has succeeded in crafting quite a formidable experience.
Clearly influenced by several generations of previous songwriters, he has
amalgamated many of their strengths, and still managed to put his own scent
marks all over the place.
The base magic is simple. McCombs writes
«spells» rather than songs: most of these tracks, 3 to 5-6 minutes long in
duration, reveal their complete structures very quickly, and then simply spin
the same yarn for several cycles — the Dylan/Cohen manner of functioning. Nor
is there anything particularly challenging or innovative about these cycles:
sometimes it's just one musical / vocal phrase, taken out of the folk / country
/ pop woodpile, which in most contexts would indicate laziness and lack of
talent. But with McCombs, somehow, it is different, and the answer lies not
even in the lyrics (honestly, for the first couple of listens I did not even
begin paying attention to the actual words), but in the sphere of personality.
First and foremost, the guy's got a beautiful
voice. Not as technically accomplished, perhaps, as those of the late great
Buckley family, but with a clear, fresh ring vaguely reminiscent of Jeff's, and
with an added humorous twinkle of his own, which makes all the difference. The
songs range from deeply soulful to ironically playful, but there's a seed of
soulfulness in the playfulness and vice versa: he is expressive, he is caring, and he has a sense of humor. Unlike so
many broken-hearted songwriters who have threatened to lower the broken heart
value to near-dumping levels, McCombs is not whiny or hysterical — if any of these
songs could be called manipulative, they are subtly, rather than cheaply so,
and the man is able to achieve a great balance between classic starry-eyed
romanticism and a modern day attitude without making himself look too pompous
or too hyper-intelectually cynical.
The musical arrangements are also subtle, not
amazing per se, but working very well to his advantage. Instead of sticking to
acoustic guitar or going defiantly lo-fi with noise and sludge, he goes for a
loud, but clean electric sound, with wall-of-sound elements, big crashing
drums, several guitar parts, old-fashioned organ, and plenty of echo. Oh, and
did I mention the slow tempos? Most of the tunes really take their time,
sometimes dragging down to a mortally wounded crawl (ʽA Comedian Is Someone Who
Tells Jokesʼ), yet it all works out to his complete advantage — on ʽComedianʼ,
for instance, it helps him to gain even more power over the listener with
lilting arches of vocal modulation; the way he intones that particular title
makes me think of the song as the 21st century's ʽDeath Of A Clownʼ, and it
might even go deeper than the Dave Davies tune.
No song better illustrates how little do the
actual lyrics matter than the closing number, ʽMy Masterʼ — four minutes of
simplistic strum and mono-dialog that goes like this, "I heard my
Master... spoke with your Master... I wonder what for?.. was it in commerce?..
very odd, isn't it?.. very odd indeed", and on and on and on. It's
literally a song about nothing about nothing, but it manages to entrance me for
four minutes, like some mystical lullaby where all that matters is the tone of
the voice... and, oh, what a perfect tone for a lullaby.
If the album closes with a lullaby (that is as
sweet as it is formally meaningless), it opens with a big soulful splash — ʽI
Went To The Hospitalʼ is a great way to make your solemn peace with God without
saying a single word about this directly. It's a big risk, really, to open your
career with such a solemn gesture, but in this case it is more of a risk that
none of your subsequent career will match the awesome opening rather than you
are going to fall flat on your face with your very first step. Again, you might
tear out occasional bits of cool lyrics, like "is it dying that terrified
you, or just being dead?", but the song might as well have been wordless —
what matters is the wave-form of each verse and how the guy is steering his
sonic ship on top of each wave and then gracefully bringing it down. Beautiful.
Almost every song on here works at some level. He
may be pleading and vulnerable and doom-sensing (ʽMeet Me Here At Dawnʼ), or he
might sound like an Everly brother stuck in a loop and loving it (ʽBobby, King
Of Boystownʼ), or he can give the impression of a resigned sage sitting on top
of the hill and watching the world go to pieces (ʽAIDS In Africaʼ — much of the
song consists simply of chanting its title, as a symbolic representation of
everything that went wrong, and it's totally enthralling), or he can slow the
tempo even further down to give a chilling portrait of an individual striving
to make an emotional difference despite all of his vital systems having ground
down to a near-complete halt (ʽBedding Down Post-Xmastimeʼ — that's the way I
hear it without delving too deep into the actual lyrics, anyway).
By the end of it all, you probably won't have a
clear idea of how all these pieces assemble together in a cohesive portrait;
but if you are left unimpressed, or, at least, without a definite understanding
that you have just heard something special, just try to keep listening — I
cannot guarantee a spiritual connection for everybody, of course, but as far
as I'm concerned, this guy's got ten times more spirituality in him than Conor
Oberst and Justin Vernon combined, and the fact that the modern world would
rather choose those two as their role
models than the much less known Cass is... well, it's just one of those facts.
The worst thing I can say about A,
now, is that the artist would have a hell of a hard time trying to top it in
the future, but, naturally, in this particular case it merely translates into an
even stronger thumbs
up.
Yes! Cass! One of my modern heroes. Can't wait for your take on "Catacombs"!
ReplyDelete