Now something of an auteur, the fourth instalment in Cass McCombs’ life and art is CATACOMBS, and it is a thing of rare imagination from an artist whose wisdom and mischief will appeal as much to those in the stately manors as his more familiar lost souls on skid row. Like his previous LP Dropping The Writ, CATACOMBS possesses that rare ability to attack both the listener’s heart with its melodies and textures, and head with its poetry and themes. It is, as wretchedly hackneyed as it is to say, one of those albums ‘without category’. Indeed, it is somehow without influence or even form at times as McCombs hits dazzling heights of songwriting after his early LPs, A and PREfection had been looser, more raggedly glorious affairs. Both musically and lyrically, it is a watershed.
One difference from Dropping The Writ, however, is rather than taking a course of quasi-literary biography, this time he seems to be opening a dialogue with other, often spectral and ambiguous, individuals. The first line of album opener Dreams Come True Girl is ‘You’re not my dream girl / You’re not my reality girl / You’re my dreams come true girl’. Compare that openness, that direct address to a subject, with ‘I was born in a hospital that was very big and white’, on Dropping The Writ’s self-mythologising opener, Lionkiller. Then there is the quite extraordinary My Sister My Spouse, another conversation.
On his previous three albums, McCombs’ lyrics have been obtuse, vague, opaque and literate. He offers strange episodes and vivid imagery that are mere vignettes by themselves but add up to something approaching a mood or atmosphere collectively. From domestic scenes to more metaphysical concerns, he somehow paints clear stories from disparate lines. However, again, there are moments on CATACOMBS where a rather more direct approach is in order. Hear the relatively coherent narratives on Don’t Vote and The Executioner's Song, where specificity of theme makes its way into his music. Of course, there is always a distinct wit at work here too as he paints his modernity with both a sense of the absurd and the poignant… Then again, he is as enigmatic as ever on Prima Donna and the ‘sequel’, Lionkiller Got Married.
Typically, and wisely, McCombs is wary of aligning himself too closely with any notion of confession. In some ways, he fulfils a different persona in every song.
“At least when it comes to making a song,” he explains, “I feel we are all living mythological figures, myths are the most real things we have. But with my songs I’m trying to do the opposite, to obliterate my self, not bronze it. Good songs are simple, they tend to twist the facts. In that sense, none of the records are autobiography, it is all fiction. If this were turned into a maxim, it would sound something like: fiction makes understanding, fact makes chaos.” Similarly, a wariness exits in Cass McCombs’ relationship with the media. He thinks artists should never have to “vouch for their actions”, which is reasonable enough. He shies away from interviews because he believes he has the “personality of a wet blanket”. Which is surely hogwash. But surely it is OK for a fan that merely feels something in common with your music to wish to discover more about the individual behind it, in a purely innocent, interested way? The music kinda demands it. “The scenario just makes me uncomfortable,” says McCombs. “I definitely seek out information about my favourite artists, though I don’t think I’ve learned very much from it – it tends to distract from my original interest. I have a distrust with logic and responsibility, it just makes things drag a bit… it’s a bog, especially with music.”
Few artists have intellectualised their relationship with the media this way. In drawing attention to the fact that often musicians can feel pressurised by forces that have no relation or concern with the musical process, his one and only concern, he makes a valid point. Unlike so many others, McCombs’ aversion to interviews is not a ‘pissy artist’ sort of thing. It is something more like humility. It also helps that McCombs is staggeringly gifted.
Cass McCombs was born in California, yet is the last artist you would associate with a sense of ‘place’. He left for the East Coast in his early twenties in a fit of gloom.
“I wasn’t really thinking about music, I sold all my instruments and records. I don’t even remember ever looking for anything. I was just sick of life.” Ultimately he did end up dabbling with music in various cities, playing open mic nights in New York amid enduring other things to get by. “So I got a job cleaning toilets at a nightclub in Baltimore,” he sings on Dropping The Writ’s ‘That’s That’. Ever since, he has floated from coast to coast… “I’m always travelling,” he says, “but not really moving. I’ve mostly been in Chicago, but now I’m in Los Angeles. I like to always be working on music so I go where I need to, to make that happen.” Beholden to nowhere, it is arguably this peripatetic existence that is responsible for his lack of a specified ‘sound’ – aside from a few mandolins that have inevitably led to him bearing the label of an ‘indie-folk’ artist. To bring the heinous classification of ‘indie’ to Cass McCombs is a crime indeed.
Of all the strange descriptions bewildered critics have come up with to explain the music of Cass McCombs, the likes of ‘post nostalgia’ and ‘new old school’ are among the most amusing. This is probably meant to draw attention to the wistful or Romantic elements of his sensibility – the tender CATACOMBS track You Saved My Life or the yearning of Harmonia perhaps offer themes of retrospection, but McCombs is no yearning sentimentalist: “I’m not a nostalgia person, so that has nothing to do with how I see my music. To me, it’s new if it’s new to you. Each listener is the time code.” If that’s not a pop adage to swear by I don’t know what is. Clearly no wet blanket in sight. Even so, the doubts about having to ‘vindicate’ himself to curious onlookers remain. 'and isn't it this stinking world, that likes to see beauty suffer?' he sings on Prima Donna. In the greatest of American traditions, McCombs carries on transcending fad and fashion to ensure the art of songwriting lives on. So understand that all there is to know about Cass McCombs can be found in his songs… in fact all there is to know about a lot of things can be found in his songs.
Barnaby Smith, 2009