Cass McCombs
The singer-songwriter’s third full-length explores the pastoral and picturesque elements of life in the big city
By Katy Henriksen
Published: October 19th, 2007 | 5:00am
Cass McCombs couldn’t escape the cicadas of Baltimore in the summer of 2004. “There were just millions and millions of cicadas. You couldn’t walk anywhere without stepping on hundreds of them,” he explains via phone from his new Chicago home. “They’re all up in your face and they’re mating. They’re dying. Their flesh is peeling off. They reek. The whole summer it was hard to ignore their presence.”
At the time, McCombs had taken to carrying around a hand-held tape recorder, into which he whispered ideas and used to capture random sounds, such as the shrill tremolo chorus these large, winged insects created. This particular field recording made it onto McCombs’ third full-length, Dropping the Writ, released October 9, 2007. “It was just such a unique experience,” McCombs explains of the cicada snippet. “I just wanted to put it on this record.”
McCombs has a propensity for unusual sound — collecting that illustrates the composition process of a musician who isn’t content to simply settle for one noise. “I don’t really relate to any single genre or ideology, per se,” the singer-songwriter-musician says. “I’m the kind of person that, you know, I love it, then hate it, and then love it again.”
A listen to Dropping the Writ confirms McCombs’ aversion to sticking to just one thing. There are moments of keyboard-driven, mod-rocknroll, Depression-era blues riffs and jangly pop — just to name a few. His smooth tenor and intricate guitar picking meld the juxtapositions with a result that’s at once catchy, sweeping, and engaging.
Recorded in Southern California, where McCombs lived from 2005 until his recent move to Chicago, the Writ's songs are about the many changes he’d experienced since 2005’s PREfection. They were written over a span of three years, yet the album represents only half of the finished material during that time. “It’s really a collection of the songs that fit together to make it interesting, to make it flow,” McCombs says.
The Writ’s assembled band can be summed up the same way. Over the years, McCombs has performed and recorded with many musicians. By the time the album was to be recorded, the band formed organically. “I was playing in their bands and they were helping me with mine,” he says. “Friends of friends of friends got involved. It wasn’t really much of a decision process. It was really just who wanted to contribute.”
One reason McCombs re-located to the Midwest was to be close to other musicians in Chicago. “I had a lot of friends here, and I felt it was time to move,” he explains. “There were so many musicians here that I was looking forward to playing with.”
Since his move, McCombs hasn’t had the chance to explore historical spots and distinct locales, though he appreciates the atmosphere of the town’s friendly people.
He can’t say the same, however, about Chicago’s infamous drivers. McCombs remembers riding his bike through a large intersection when a tow truck ran a red light, and collided head-on with another car only two feet in front of him. Thankfully, he escaped injury.
“People drive far
more insane here,” McCombs says with the same astonishment he uses in
describing Baltimore’s cicada infestation. Although McCombs is
re-adjusting to Chicago’s sights and sounds, the artist’s capacity to
turn the unconventional into the harmonious leaves us with the
suspicion that there are more unlikely inspirations on the way.
—
Photos by Aaron Brown
Issue #35
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