19.08. CASS McCOMBS – Heartmind – Anti- Records
Wie auch auf seinen letzten Alben, ist die Bandbreite der stilistischen Mittel groß. Man darf aber ( zum Glück ?) konstatieren, dass er selten den geraden, einfachen Weg wählt, um seine Botschaften an den Mann / die Frau zu bringen. Aber wer hätte das auch erwartet ?
Heartmind ist ein Album mit acht Liedern, das sich wie eine Reise durch verschiedene melodische Gefühle anfühlt, die irgendwie so geformt sind, dass sie die Bedürfnisse eines bestimmten Hörers erfüllen und das widerspiegeln, was er in diese gleichmäßig glühenden und tragikomischen Tracks einbringt. Cass hat die Bühne bereitet und überlässt es dem Hörer, die Helden und Schurken, die Gewinner und Verlierer, die Witze und die Langweiler zu wählen. Er will nicht alle Fragen stellen, geschweige denn die Antworten geben.
Wo die einen schwarzen Humor hören, hören die anderen unerbittlichen Schmerz; wo die einen gewinnenden Zynismus hören, hören die anderen erschütternden Nihilismus.
Cass erzählt freimütig: "Ich habe dieses Album gemacht, um den Verlust einiger enger Freunde zu verarbeiten. Die Erinnerungen an sie haben mich dabei begleitet und leben hoffentlich in der Musik weiter. Es ist seltsam zu erkennen, dass nicht sie verloren gegangen sind, sondern ich."
Cass nahm die Songs in mehreren Sessions an beiden Küsten, in Brooklyn und Burbank, auf und produzierte gemeinsam mit Shahzad Ismaily, Buddy Ross und Ariel Rechtshaid. Abgemischt wurde das Album von Rob Schnapf, der auch Cass' ANTI-Debüt Mangy Love produziert hat. Wynonna Judd steuert Harmonien bei, während ihr Verehrer Cactus Moser die Lap Steel beisteuert. Weitere Mitwirkende sind Joe Russo, Kassa Overall, Danielle Haim, The Chapin Sisters, Frank LoCrasto und Nestor Gomez.
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Band: Cass McCombs
Album: Tip Of The Sphere
VÖ: 08.02.2019
Label: Epitaph / Indigo
Website: http://cassmccombs.com/
Cass McCombs is a transient storyteller interested in words, music and dreams. His ninth full-length album, Tip of the Sphere, is due February 8, 2019 on ANTI- Records. In conjunction with today’s album announcement, McCombs shares the album’s lead single, “Sleeping Volcanoes”.
Tip of the Sphere follows 2016’s Mangy Love. For that record, McCombs made his television debut on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and was featured in The New York Times’ Sunday Arts & Leisure section. It was named a “Best Rock Album of the Year” by Pitchfork, featured in the Washington Post’s “Best Music of 2016,” plus many other best of 2016 lists, and was his overall most critically praised album.
While most of McCombs albums have been pieced together in different studios over an extended period of time, Tip of the Sphere was recorded quickly and with a strong sense of purpose at Shahzad Ismaily’s Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn. This new approach for McCombs brought his songs a raw immediacy and a special balance of compassion and experimentation with the intent of making a more consistent statement. The rock songs have more fervor, the ballads are more beautiful, the explorations more confident; the sounds of jazz and Latin music creep in through the back window. Engineered by Sam Owens (aka Sam Evian), Tip of the Sphere features the core band of McCombs (guitar, vocals), Dan Horne (bass), Otto Hauser (drums) and Frank LoCrasto (piano, organ, and more), plus a range of guests.
Tip of the Sphere recounts what has unfolded in the wake of Mangy Love’s pre-inaugural prophetic themes. It presents an artist trying to make sense of it all through a relentless, ever searching creative process. Throughout Tip of the Sphere, McCombs floats through a suite of songs driven by a journeying mysticism and dark grace. The thematic centerpiece of the album, “Sleeping Volcanoes,” is a rousing, rock and roll number that uses a distinct lyrical approach to intensify the narrative. On the main refrain, a key phrase of the song is repeated continuously and taken through its possible meanings, almost like a jazz musician repeating a musical phrase through key and chord changes. As described by McCombs, “Sleeping Volcanoes” is about “people passing each other on the sidewalk unaware of the emotional volatility they are brushing past, like a sleeping volcano that could erupt at any moment.”
The ‘Castillo de la Esfera’ is featured inside the vinyl edition of Tip of the Sphere. ‘The ‘Castillo de la Esfera‘ was created by fellow Northern California artist and contemporary Tahiti Pehrson as an homage to Brion Gysin’s dream machine. When the ‘Castillo de la Esfera’ is placed on top of the record player, and as the record is played (with or without a lightbulb cantilevered in the center), thoughts are encouraged to wander.
Info zum alten Album:
Band: CassMcCombs
Album: Mangy Love
VÖ: 26.08.2016
Label: ANTI- / Indigo
Website: www.cassmccombs.com
To all music journalists and related parties, and in the interest of brevity, here is a secular summation of what is to follow: Cass McCombs has completed his new record. It is entitled Mangy Love and it is a worthy addition to his egg (or, as the French say, his oeuf). Mangy Love is a succinct and direct record composed of succinct and direct songs that draw influence from such disparate worlds as loose Californian jamming and tight Philadelphian soul. Please feel free to refer to it as "Garcia & Huff” music if you need to lift a catchphrase from this press release to drop into your newspaper article, zine review, or blog post.
And that’s it. You can stop reading now if you’re on a deadline or not used to consuming more than 140 characters at a time. But then again, if you’d like to take the ride with us, please continue.
Just this very April (which is the cruelest month), Cass McCombs revealed to his adherents that he had driven a lawn aerator clean through his foot while innocently tending to his garden. (This is true; it really happened.) Repeated ensuing attempts on our part to liken Cass to Jesus Christ and to portray his impaled foot as an incidence of stigmata have proven fruitless. Yet we, the McCombs faithful, persist in our attempts to find synchronicity between Cass and JC, just as we always have.
On Mangy Love, Cass’s righteous and angry engagement with issues of the spirit continues. Violence, temptation, healing, paradox, the serpent, questing, the power of the female and the contrived duality that men impose upon women, renunciation, homegoing: Such are the thematic concerns that run through Mangy Love like shining threads in a golden fleece. Pieces of everyday mundanity— things like Netflix and Cheez-Whiz—are peppered throughout the record like earthly anchors, bits of the ordinary that serve to highlight the divine concerns that, like a certain hired holy hitman from Nazareth, Cass grapples with so that we don’t have to. Because, really, who wants to? And what does a prophet do if not, ultimately, take one for the team?
There we go, deifying McCombs again. Apologies.
But wait, brothers, sisters, and others. Let’s also talk about Cass’s natural cultivation of fellowship. Mangy Love is a veritable Passover of worthy collaborators. Here we have the saintly voice of Angel Olsen, there we have the subtle congas of Ryan Sawyer. What’s that you hear? It’s the twin Beachwood Sparks of Aaron Sperske and Farmer Dave Scher, and the obscured Lily of Kurt Heasley. And over yonder we’ve found the unmistakable vocals of Phish man Mike Gordon and, hark, the solemn intonation of Rev. Goat Carson, the deeply spiritual brother of legendary screenwriter and actor L.M. Kit Carson (may he rest in peace). Is that the gilded touch of producers Rob Schnapf (helmsman of numerous Elliot Smith gems) and Dan Horne (the lovely Chapin Sisters) steering the ship? Praise Cass, it is so. McCombs casts his records as a director does his films, bringing in players who add not only musical expertise but also magnetic vibrational imprints. Like Snow White with her fauna or, yes, ol’ Jesus with his sheep, a magical mob gathers around Cass. Each track on Mangy
Love is laden with their presences.
How to summarize? Is it a fool’s errand to try encapsulating that which is ongoing? It’s likely that it is. The world of Cass is a continuum, and this momentary milestone is another blip along the way. But know this: Mangy Love, like many great records, is both a salve and a challenge. It will both soothe and disturb. The mood is generally honeyed—dulcet, even—and thrilling in its displays of casually virtuoso musicianship. But the messages? The messages found herein will leave you with questions, and then answers, and then more questions which will spring from those answers. In this way Mangy Love, like Cass, lives both now and forever.
Yours in Faith,
Fr. Jesse Pearson, President
The Apostles of McCombs (Los Angeles Chapter)
Jesse Pearson is the founder and editor of the periodical Apology, creative director at the web and TV studio Super Deluxe, and the former editor-in-chief of Vice.
