So, Does Everyone Hate Cass McCombs?

It's always for better with RHP

Love this album as much as Wits End, Prefection, A and Dropping The Writ, but not as much as Catacombs (some days, my favorite songwriter album of the decade) and Humor Risk (ditto).

I deleted the Sean interludes too, and not just because I've seen that documentary already.

Cass rules. I hope I never met him. I don't want to find out he, like, skateboards or drinks PBR or something. I like to imagine that his lyrics are all deeply obscured references to sinister crimes he's committed; so many of them read like the kind of inscrutable puzzle-poetry that might appear in taunting letters to the police or something. His music is like if Scorpio from Dirty Harry had a band.

err, hope I never meet him, rather.

i thought he was a skateboarder! like, a good one...

He may be! I have no idea. I've gone to great lengths to not meet him. We have friends in common, I've seen him play, etc.

I prefer to imagine him as a persona and not a person, and his inscrutability makes that easy. In the right, err, 'frame of mind' (heh heh), his records spook me like metal records used to. Like, an unstable person might look for (and even find!) 'clues' in these songs. You know?

his wiki entry supports the serial killer scenario:

"He has led a nomadic existence for most of his adult life, moving from one city to the next, living in cars, on couches and at campsites."

McCombs has stated that his tombstone will read "Home At Last."[12]

I could do without his mystique/persona but this album is good.

"Persona" as a concept alone makes most people roll their eyes but if done well it is kind of necessary to distinguish the album with the picture of a guitar playing guy under the name of that guy apart from the other album with the picture of a guitar playing guy under the name of that guy.

his D.H. Lawrence-in-Taos-meets-Crazy-Horse vibe isn't convincing though

i admire his dedication to songs that have almost the exact same tempo and vocal delivery. in that way he really is reminiscent of M.K. from RHP. they do the same thing over and over and it can only be because they really like that thing. I liked that about JJ Cale too. but if you don't like it you are gonna be bored probably. i am bored by so many guitar dudes. maria put on richard buckner one day and i was so over it halfway through the 2nd song. but some people love him and can listen for hours.

I like Buckner too but these dudes are worlds apart. Cass reminds me of Morrissey if Morrissey liked Poe instead of Wilde. Buckner reminds me of an alt country-damaged Ralph Stanley or maybe even a more Americanized (??) June Tabor (in a good way). Buckner is way less inscrutable, more earnest.

Also, solo Lou Reed apologists should find much to love here

i just mean that people are different when it comes to voices and technique. not comparing anyone really. more of a general singer/songwriter thing. i apparently have a large capacity for cass and a lot of people probably wouldn't. same with buckner or nick cave or a million other people. it's a personal taste thing.

but that's kinda all obvious anyway. some people like some things/some people don't. i would understand completely if people were bored by cass. i would totally get that.

i mean i was comparing cass and MK from red house painters. i do think of RHP sometimes when i hear cass. just the lonely sad weird thing more than anything else. like they both see themselves as lonely weirdos.

Also, solo Lou Reed apologists should find much to love here

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic,

I'm looking for a new sensation

xp Oh, yeah, totally. I've tried to convert people I know who like things like this, and they don't understand my obsession with his records at all. His records just seem to fill a slot in my life that no other records do. I mean, it's the only pop music I listen to ON WEED, for example. I tend to get pretty effusive and annoying when I talk about certain Cass McCombs songs.

Never got into RHP beyond a few songs college girlfriends were obsessed with (one about New Jersey or something?). Respect more than admiration for Kozelek. Not sure I've ever made it all the way through one of his records. Which I guess is proving your point about different strokes etc, Scott!

Lonely weirdos apparently really resonates with me, too.

Though have you checked out any later Sun Kil Moon?

xp

I have - a friend was really into the double album he put out recently (not the most recent, the one before it? It had a lot of uproarious titles) and played it for me on a recent drive. I kept forgetting it was on. Maybe that was the wrong setting?

Ha, maybe but it could just be more evidence that Kozelek isn't quite for you. In my opinion, if the "Admiral Fell Promises" album doesn't do it for you nothing else will (since it sounds you sampled the other MK styles already).

And the appropriate setting is... near a fireplace? A view of changing fall leaves? Something like that.

i kinda bailed after the first SKM album which i liked a lot. i love all the RHP stuff though. i would recommend the first sun kil moon album, the s/t red house painters album known as "bridge" (has a bridge on the cover), and Ocean Beach if someone were interested in his stuff. "bridge" does indeed have "new jersey" on it so it might remind people of old girlfriends/boyfriends.

in my defense, most of his output since RHP has consisted of sad acoustic covers of alt-rock and ac/dc songs, so, i think i can be forgiven for not listening to everything. the SKM album i had hopes for was the one that was not an entire album of modest mouse covers, April, and it was just really forgettable to me. overlong, tedious, all the things that people who don't like RHP would say about that band and that i never agreed with.

i would still listen to the last SKM albums if i saw them cheap somewhere though.

I will definitely give the SKM stuff another chance! Thanks for the recommendations.

scott "Admiral Fell Promises" is especially good. I think it is very distinct even though the ingredients definitely are not.

It was much more absorbing initially than April for me.

This has been in seriously heavy rotation since it came out. I guess I should go back and listen to his older stuff.

alfred wrote a really nice review of the new album:

http://www.spin.com/articles/cass-mccombs-big-wheel-and-others-domino/

thank you Alfred for not mentioning that McCombs hates doing press or lives a nomadic existance and all the other crap that most writers can't stop repeating.
I still really like the Manassas song.

oh I don't care for biography

This has been in seriously heavy rotation since it came out. I guess I should go back and listen to his older stuff.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Monday, October 21, 2013 10:57 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dropping The Writ!

A top something favorite album ever for me.

Forgot to report that the deluxe vinyl for this was worth it! Love the packaging and the bonus 7" is great. Album sounds great on record too. Only hiccup was that it reads "Casss McCombs" on the spine, but that might be intentional I guess.

cassssssssss

2 or more extras I can see, 1 extra though? I should write them an angry letter about this.

Dear Sirs or, as you would have it, Sirss,

“I don’t even really want to make records — I’m dissatisfied with the whole medium,” said the singer-songwriter Cass McCombs, who has made seven of them, including the 22-track “Big Wheel and Others,” which he released earlier this month. “It’s a bizarre format in these digital times. The size of the Internet is infinite, so why do we define albums to be a specific length? It’s annoying to have to conform to something so arbitrary.” That’s why his latest, a massive, sprawling tapestry (the extended vinyl edition actually features 25 songs) that jumps from genre to genre, explodes the format. “It’s more like two and a half albums,” McCombs said with a laugh. “I actually had enough material to make a terrible triple album. As much as I love “Sandinista!,” I never thought that was a good idea.”

It's long but I don't mind a bit.

wait till you get to the nine-minute one in which he murmurs "They say Indians are for India" over and over.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 7, 2013 1:45 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm glad you revised this criticism in your review because nothing about this statement is true about the song in question.

yeah it's "They say an Indian doesn't come from India" and it's 8:59.

Saw him play last night. A very good set that didn't just concentrate on songs from the new album. The only disappointing part was 'County Line' with no Rhodes.

He only says that once, too.

xp

That was the main error.

i can't say i get what cass was going for with everything has to be just so. the older version, which was released as a b-side, is great. one of his best melodies in hidden there.

Excellent, jammy show last night in nyc. Highlights were often from guitarist Dan Iead, who got a very Jerry Garcia like tone on his solo for There Can Be Only One, had lovely nimble runs on the pedal steel, and had a huge, jazzy/psychy solo on the standout number Dream Comes True Girl (nearly as skronky as the keyboard solo from this show: http://livewire.auralstates.com/2011/07/28/cass-mccombs-live-at-the-golden-west-cafe/)
Drummer Joe Russo also really great.

my brother and cass! wish i could go. i never go.

https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1532078_669302099774176_5714364121732205858_n.jpg

Go!

recent live show: https://archive.org/details/cm2013-12-13.mk4.rbox
that's the only thing up on the archive at the moment, but hopefully more pop up - i think he is actually a lot better live than on record.