Mistletone

Artwork by Albert Herter

CASS MCCOMBS TOUR DATES:

MELBOURNE: Thursday, January 30 @ Northcote Social Club w/- Ross McLennan. Tickets on sale now from The Corner Box Office. Presented by Mistletone & Triple R.
Laneway Brisbane: Friday, January 31 – RNA, Fortitude Valley. Tickets & info here.
Laneway Melbourne: Saturday, February 1 – Footscray Community Arts Centre/River’s Edge. Tickets & info here.
Laneway Sydney: Sunday, February 2 – Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle. Tickets & info here.
SYDNEY: Thursday, February 6 @ Oxford Art Factory w/- Melodie Nelson. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Presented by Mistletone & 2SER.
Laneway Adelaide: Friday, February 7 – Harts Mill, Port Adelaide. Tickets & info here.
Laneway Perth: Saturday, February 8 – Esplanade Park and West End, Fremantle. Tickets & info here.

Golden singer/songwriter of our time, CASS McCOMBS has traversed many borders, literally and figuratively, since his great debut Not The Way in 2003. Americana, bedroom pop, folk and chamber music have variously held the interest of the Baltimore native, but compelling storytelling and occasional flashes of humor are the common thread here. Cass’s 2011’s twin releases, Humour Risk and Wit’s End (Domino), highlights amongst a catalogue peppered with brilliance. His new double album for Domino Records, Big Wheel and Others, is a sprawling, visionary album that may just be his best yet. Big Wheel and Others is further proof of Cass’s status as one of his generation’s most visionary songwriters – as uncompromising, radical and counter-cultural as any other artist working today.

As Pitchfork noted, “he’s quietly become one of America’s finest chroniclers of fringe characters, a writer of heart-rending love songs and psychedelic odes to the natural world, a teller of tall-tales with a sense of humor dry as desert wood, and that rare folksinger who actually sings about the folk. Over the last decade, McCombs has been a remarkably consistent, if not publicity-averse, singer-songwriter, comparable to Bill Callahan and Will Oldham as our foremost translators of Old, Weird America into modern terms (and vice-versa).”

The most ambitious and stylistically diverse Cass McCombs release to date, the twenty-two song long Big Wheel and Others is a marvel of great beauty, insight, humour and mystery that sees Cass at the peak of his mercurial powers – his restless muse making stops at all the strangest roadsides of rock and roll, blues, jazz, country and more on its quest for truth and understanding. In equal parts bucolically gorgeous and roughshod, mischievously obtuse and direct, painfully personal and cosmically universal, Big Wheel… is the perfect distillation of over a decade’s worth of creation and chaos in the life of a true pillar of the American underground.

The depth of imagination and skill of execution on show throughout Big Wheel… sees Cass showing once again that he is a masterful manipulator of traditional forms – a writer capable of making the most care-worn conventions feel subversive and new by virtue of his spirit and perspective. Songs such as ‘Aeon of Aquarius Blues’, the yearningly romantic ‘Angel Blood’ and lead single ‘There Can Be Only One’ reaffirm Cass’s intimate relationship with the acoustic guitar as an eloquent and expressive instrument, while the likes of ‘Big Wheel’ and ‘Satan Is My Toy’ are two of the leanest, most visceral songs in his catalogue to date. Conversely, ‘The Burning Of The Temple’ and ‘Joe Murder’ are brittle and forlorn, haunted by melancholic jazz motifs and bursts of avant-garde noise. Elsewhere, 9-minute album centrepiece ‘Everything Has To Be Just So’ encapsulates Cass’s ability to imbue wry social commentary with an overarching humanity, as the song opens from rattlesnake tavern blues into emotive lament with deft sleight of hand.

Brimming with evocative storytelling, discerning introspection and heartrending melody, Big Wheel And Others is a bold new chapter in the fascinating Cass McCombs legend.

Cass McCombs “Morning Star” from Patrick O’Dell on Vimeo.