CASS McCOMBS' excellent debut album "A" was a work of skewed gravitas that still makes regular appearances on you reviewer's over-worked hi-fi. Brittle, moving, tender and sometimes simply plain odd, it's one of those records that sheds skins while you keep picking away at the fascinating layers beneath.
"Sacred Heart", meanwhile is the first single from Cass's second album "PREfection" (sic), due in February 2005, and it shows that the 11 months or so since "A" was released have been anything but fallow in McCombs' world. It's superficially poppier than anything on "A", with a dramatic, chiming, Smiths-y swing in its' step. Typically, though, the lyrical content is far darker, and Cass delivers the sombre lyrics ("We are gathered here in reverence/ Dearly departed, we will all return to the soil") in a sermon-esque fashion that's somehow stern and achingly vulnerable all at once. How does he do it? It's truly marvellous.
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Double A-side billing goes to the equally terrific "Twins." This is a slower, ultra-brooding indie ballad built on lugubrious rhythms, phased guitar and Johnny Roscoe's descriptive, John Cale-style piano. Lyrically brilliant ("We entered the tomb of Queen Nefertari/ I had on my white suit, you wore a stolen silk sari") it's graceful musically, but festers with accusatory rage as it develops ("You lied to me and I to you/ I guess we deserve each other") and its' deal is finally sealed by the dark brown baritone guitar coda: a thing of wonder in itself.
Cass McCombs, then, is PREfecting the art of heartbreaking seduction. That album's gonna be a killer. I can feel it in me water.
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