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Lost In Cass McCombs [Catacombs Album Review]
Sullen overtones notwithstanding, the entire album comes bathed in a kind of youthful glow, and it’s a compelling one. Catacombs’ composite of innocence and opacity seems fitting for bedroom serenades—at several points in the album we get the distinct impression it was written for an audience of one—or the soundtracks of mumblecore films.
Despite the difficulty in interpreting some of its songs, Catacombs feels like an easygoing, summer listening album. It opens with one of the most perfect, diaphanous, to-die-for tracks we’ve heard since Grizzly Bear’s “Knife” in 2006. Cass McCombs has mastered the spell of casting spare, hazy instrumentation that creates a space just tangible enough for the listener to become lost in. But “Dreams Come True Girl” simply sets the bar outlandishly high, even by the time Karen Black’s guest vocals make an entrance late in the song, sun-drenched and conjuring Lolita.Few tracks on the rest of the album end up escaping the long shadow cast by its opener.
Much of Catacombs explores the obvious connection between musicians and drifters; these are songs for the road. McCombs never seems to stay in one place even when not touring, so it’s fitting that he’s chosen as his style a sort of modernization of the American storytelling tradition. He’s been called a songwriter’s songwriter, and thinking of him in this framework speaks to his ability to make obvious references, even to early Dylan, and still come away sounding authentic.
McComb’s fluid vocals and wistful blend of acoustic and pedal steel guitar are the stars of the album’s other highlights, “Harmonia,” with “Jonesy Boy,” and “My Sister, My Spouse” providing a sprawling nostalgia. The overall impression of Catacombs is that of a modern-day On the Road -perhaps undertaken in a Prius. Yes, it’s possible- all with the help of a little genre some like to call “Dream Pop.”
