Mistletone

Artwork by Carl Breitkreuz

CASS MCCOMBS TOUR DATES:

MELBOURNE: FRIDAY FEBRUARY 17 @ THE CORNER with special guests The Orbweavers + Wintercoats. Tickets on sale now from The Corner box office.

SYDNEY: SATURDAY FEBRUARY 18 @ THE STANDARD with special guests The Singing Skies. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix.

PERTH MONDAY FEBRUARY 20 @ PERTH INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL. Tickets on sale now from Perth Festival.

Mistletone proudly presents Cass McCombs and his band for the first time in Australia, performing at Perth Festival plus two shows only in Melbourne and Sydney.

California-based singer/songwriter Cass McCombs’ moody but often surprisingly humorous music has won the hearts of many Australian fans who will be thrilled that he is finally visiting our shores after releasing six acclaimed and much loved albums, most recently the gently optimistic Humor Risk and one of the stars of last year’s best-of lists, the dark chamber music-inspired Wit’s End, which featured the song hailed by many as the best of 2011, County Line.

Deeply distrustful of “The Business”, Cass has stayed relatively underground, supported by a devoted fan base and his label/publisher. In 2010, Domino Records hired a photo-surveillance private investigator to follow Cass and take what would become the publicity shots for Wit’s End. Examples such as this suggest that he and mainstream acceptance are in a state of perpetual stalemate.

However, in contrast to his persona, Cass’s music is generous, the melodies always infectious, the production and musicianship first-rate. And at the forefront of his craft are always the lyrics, which more than any songwriter today propels the avant-garde. He presents morally ambiguous situations for the listener, allowing them to interpret however they choose.

Cass has always refused to speak his influences, except for American folk music and The Beatles. He is a folk artist, telling the stories of his native land in a modern tongue.

Cass McCombs was born in 1977 and raised in Northern California. He is of the generation that grew up hearing the stories still fresh on people’s minds: Zodiac killings, Zebra killings, Manson, Black Panthers, SLA, riots, People’s Park, LSD, etc. These were the local legends and became the basis for Cass’s imagination. He is a child of the ’70s.

Cass lived many years drifting the U.S. before ever attempting to make music seriously, and learned from this experience to listen to people’s stories from many walks of life. Instead of university, this was his education: working as a janitor, in a horse stable, a book shop; as a soda jerk, truck driver, movie projectionist; he worked construction in New Jersey, and at a midtown NYC delicatessen. Cass developed his narrative songwriting style, and since has always expressed himself through the use of characters.

He writes stories for his friends using their humour, their language, with detail and color, relating their drug use to classical literary themes, for instance. Rather than fulfilling the stereotype of the confessional singer-songwriter, he describes the lifestyles and feelings of those that surround him, with more love than judgment.

Humor Risk is his sixth-and-a-half record, the second of two albums Cass released in 2011. The first was Wit’s End, which featured the tragic song County Line, named by Pitchfork as their number 8 best song of 2011.

Musically, Humor Risk is more rhythm-based, and with a heavier lyricism, than its sparse predecessor. Both were compiled from recordings made over the course of three years, in various places such as New York City, New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and mixed in a single session and divided into albums.

This follows the way Cass works; he writes continuously, not for any album in mind, and then puts them into themed groups. And this is why Australian audiences are in for such a rare treat when this “unobtrusively brilliant” (to quote John Peel) artist finally lands on our shores.

“An extraordinary display of songwriting prowess… another casually monumental achievement from one of the great singer-songwriters of the day“- Q (four stars)

“One of America’s most unique and affecting songwriters” – UNCUT (four stars)

“A genuine twenty-first century maverick” – MOJO (four stars)

“Suffering rarely has sounded so comforting” – SPIN