CASS McCOMBS' debut EP "Not The Way" prior to Christmas served notice that we had someone special in our midst, but with "A", his full-length debut album, we can hear his brilliant quirked-out songwriting stuffed with a liberal portion of darkness truly coming to fruition.
No doubt McCombs will suffer the slings and arrows of being referred to as "lo-fi" because the songs here are largely quite fragile, semi-acoustic and usually driven in deceptively shambolic fashion by McCombs' eratically-strummed guitar and Jason Quever's less than metronomic drumming, but there's much more to McCombs than that, and to my mind these 11 vulnerable songs are executed to wring maximum emotional effect first and foremost.
And dammit, it works to a devastating degree. Shoved along by a ramshackle backbeat and empowered by churchy organ, "A" opens with arguably its' finest track "I Went To The Hospital", where McCombs' fatalistic lyrics ("Why should I lie about the results of the test? I may soon be gone to pluck on a harp") are recited with a strangely affecting mixture of fear, relish and philosophy.
It's a brilliant opener, but by no means alone in its' haunting brilliance. Indeed, it's run close by a clutch of songs like the funereal "A Comedian Is Someone Who Tells Jokes", which is quite Smog-like in its' execution, with a serene stillness pregnant with woe and McCombs deadpannning lines like "I spend my days shaking hands, forgetting names". Then there's "Meet Me At Dawn", which could almost be "..Comedian"s second cousin, such is its' slow dignity. It could be about either death or elopement, with Cass choking out the line "Our friends and family will all get left behind, we'll give 'em up."
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And there are few people out there who wouldn't shy away from the horror of a song like "AIDS In Africa". McCombs, though, is intent to tell it just as it is, and over a slow, rolling tempo with incongruous sleigh bells and amateurish drumming, his determination is both brave and memorable.
If I'm painting a sad and lonely portrait, well that's true, but it's also important to note that McCombs does sometimes leaven the inherent darkness with surrealistic insights, like on the sleepy hoedown of "My Pilgrim Dear" or the queasily jaunty shanty town pop of "Bobby, King Of Boys Town." Musically, too, he can sweeten the pill, like on the warm and soothing closer "My Master" - which isn't dissimilar to something from the third Velvets' album - or with the pepped-up walking basslines and electric piano of "When The Bible Was Wrote." Well, at least until you realise he's describing Christ's crucifixion, which might just tend to wipe the smile from yer mush.
But then we've not really signed up for the laughs where Cass McCombs is concerned, and throughout this debut album it's his quavering delivery and enduringly emotional wordplay that inevitably draws you to him. Ignore the lo-fi naysayers: "A" comes from a potent sonic alphabet soup that will not lose its' flavour in a hurry.
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