CASS McCOMBS: PREFECTION (2005)
1) Equinox; 2) Subtraction; 3)
Multiple Suns; 4) Tourist Woman; 5) Sacred Heart; 6) She's Still Suffering; 7)
Cuckoo; 8) Bury Mary; 9) City Of Brotherly Love; 10) All Your Dreams May Come
True.
Already he is moving away from the formula
established on A — only a few songs
here, such as ʽCuckooʼ and the closing ʽAll Your Dreams Come Trueʼ, give us the
same dreamy tempos and repetitive verses... and I sort of miss it. The general
idea here is that if you speed up the tempos, pump out a bit more energy, throw
in even more instruments (often bringing the atmosphere to Phil Spector kind of
standards), and make your vocal melodies more similar to Roy Orbison pop than
to Leonard Cohen balladeering, this gives you an entire new face. And it does,
but somehow it does not feel as uniquely enchanting as it did on the first
record. Maybe because deep-booming dream-pop with lush overtones is something
that is constantly on the market, be it courtesy of British Sea Power or Sufjan
Stevens, while something as ridiculously simple and entrancing as "I heard
my Master, spoke with your Master..." is not. Or maybe some people are
born for captivating simplicity and some people are born for challenging
complexity. I have no idea.
Anyway, that is not to say that Prefection, or, rather, PREfection, as they prefer to stylize
it, is bad or boring. In fact, Cass is good at carefully preserving his essence
while pouring it into a new bottle — one offered to him by the 4AD label, to
which he was now signed, and given 4AD's emphasis on all things dreamy, from
Cocteau Twins to Dead Can Dance, the shift in style may have come automatically
and subconsciously. ʽEquinoxʼ greets us with big bashing drums, deep echoes, a
subliminal synth river tone that runs through it, and vocals that are just as
beautiful as they used to be, but are now so echoey and delicate that sometimes
you almost feel them rather than hear
them. Meanwhile, the lyrics become even more cabbalistic than they used to be
("deep in the heart of Fontainebleau / the marriage of a whore and a
Jew"? which hidden episode in French history have I missed?), and I prefer
to distance myself from them altogether and simply enjoy the sentimental
mysticism of it all. If there's black magic involved, I don't want to know, but
the melody certainly suggests nothing of the kind.
On ʽSubtractionʼ, he takes the base rhythm of
ʽYou Can't Hurry Loveʼ and, again, adapts it for his own purposes, as he does
with a lots of things subsequently — except that ʽSubtractionʼ has no catchy
chorus; instead, just as the prolonged synth tone colored ʽEquinoxʼ, so is
ʽSubtractionʼ colored by equally long-winded organ notes, giving the song a
religious rather than amorous aura and culminating in a howl of "please leave
me alone!" that subtly suggests, like ʽA Comedianʼ on the previous record,
that the artist does have painful concerns of his own, and is not always resigned
to the role of outside observer.
The musical experiments, rooted in accumulated
experience, continue with ʽMultiple Sunsʼ, spun around a martial bassline and
prog-rockish synthesizers in the background; ʽTourist Womanʼ, the man's first
attempt at a really fast song, with hideously distorted guitars, a frantic
rhythm track shamelessly appropriated from The Jam's ʽPrivate Hellʼ; ʽSacred
Heartʼ, all jangly-like and soulful and sounding like The Smiths with extra
Mellotron; and ʽShe's Still Sufferingʼ, with the biggest wall-of-sound on the
album, largely due to the overpowering drums and the keyboards and vocal
harmonies now completely taking over the guitars — with wave-like / veil-like
psychedelic textures that sound like My Bloody Valentine with keyboards.
Sorry, that might just be one too many
references out there, but this is also what constitutes the record's problem —
it brings on too many outside associations instead of focusing squarely on Mr.
McCombs and his own distillation of reality. Where A had the balance just right, on PREfection he sometimes ends up lost in his own songs, trying,
perhaps, too hard to gain respect as a musician at the expense of standing his
own ground as an artist. Oh, and one obvious influence I still have to mention
(sorry) is Wilco — that mix of surrealist electronics with a country-pop sensibility
that was so lauded in the case of Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot is evidently inspiring the introductions to ʽSacred Heartʼ
and ʽAll Your Dreams May Come Trueʼ, the latter of which melodically sounds inspired by ʽThings We Said Todayʼ. Okay, I'll
shut up now.
I like each of these songs — am not enthralled
by any of them, but they're tasteful, original, and deep enough to earn an
unquestionable thumbs
up. But I guess they also illustrate how doggone hard it is for an
obviously talented artist to make a mind-blowing record in the 21st century,
and, perhaps, explain why for so many talented artists of the 21st century
their first album turns out to be their best — it is the one album that comes
to them totally naturally; as they begin to force themselves to come up with
something that expands on the beginnings, though, they immediately fall upon
well-trodden paths and become less «themselves» and more of a pale mix of
themselves with somebody else. Still, let us not allow too much theorizing to
distract us from the simple melancholic beauty of ʽCuckooʼ or the grandiose scope
of ʽCity Of Brotherly Loveʼ (a song where I do not understand even a single
line, except for "yes I've read my Plato, too", which, however, does
not make life for you any better even if you've also read your Plato).
On a final note, be sure to turn your player
off right at the end of the musical part of ʽAll Your Dreamsʼ, because, as a
bonus, you get six minutes of street noises dominated by a car siren that will
not go off. Apparently, six minutes of a car siren making hell in the middle of
a busy street is supposed to symbolize something, and you are welcome to spend
the rest of your life decoding that symbolism, or debating the issue of whether
you are more partial to dumb artists or intelligent artists... and thinking
about the thin line that separates ones from others.
No comments:
Post a Comment