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Published on 7/24/08
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Cass McCombs understands that it’s the singer-songwriter’s job to feel a little sorry for himself. But when it comes to the specifics of performing that task, he’s not one for toeing the party line. In “That’s That,” a tune from his new Dropping the Writ (his debut for Domino after albums on 4AD and the Baltimore indie Monitor), McCombs mulls over a bummer far more serious than being dumped by some heartless female: “I got a job cleaning toilets at a nightclub in Baltimore,” he sings. As that line suggests, McCombs’s lyrics tend toward the elaborately detailed but slightly mysterious. “I was born in a hospital that was very big and white,” he announces in the CD’s opener, “Lionkiller,” taking us as far back into his personal journey as he can. “The hands of a male doctor pulled me into the light.”
McCombs displays a similarly liberated attitude toward stylistic matters throughout Dropping the Writ, on which he surrounds his airy, post-Morrissey croon with a distinctive mixture of jangly indie-pop guitars, rootsy lap steel and muted, shuffling percussion that sounds as if it were recorded a few houses over from where McCombs was singing. He’s also as big a fan of mixing-board echo as you’ll find outside Jamaica—something that only adds to the album’s overriding sense of intrigue.
Cass McCombs plays Bowery Ballroom Nov 12.
