So, Does Everyone Hate Cass McCombs?

Though have you checked out any later Sun Kil Moon?

xp

I have - a friend was really into the double album he put out recently (not the most recent, the one before it? It had a lot of uproarious titles) and played it for me on a recent drive. I kept forgetting it was on. Maybe that was the wrong setting?

Ha, maybe but it could just be more evidence that Kozelek isn't quite for you. In my opinion, if the "Admiral Fell Promises" album doesn't do it for you nothing else will (since it sounds you sampled the other MK styles already).

And the appropriate setting is... near a fireplace? A view of changing fall leaves? Something like that.

i kinda bailed after the first SKM album which i liked a lot. i love all the RHP stuff though. i would recommend the first sun kil moon album, the s/t red house painters album known as "bridge" (has a bridge on the cover), and Ocean Beach if someone were interested in his stuff. "bridge" does indeed have "new jersey" on it so it might remind people of old girlfriends/boyfriends.

in my defense, most of his output since RHP has consisted of sad acoustic covers of alt-rock and ac/dc songs, so, i think i can be forgiven for not listening to everything. the SKM album i had hopes for was the one that was not an entire album of modest mouse covers, April, and it was just really forgettable to me. overlong, tedious, all the things that people who don't like RHP would say about that band and that i never agreed with.

i would still listen to the last SKM albums if i saw them cheap somewhere though.

I will definitely give the SKM stuff another chance! Thanks for the recommendations.

scott "Admiral Fell Promises" is especially good. I think it is very distinct even though the ingredients definitely are not.

It was much more absorbing initially than April for me.

This has been in seriously heavy rotation since it came out. I guess I should go back and listen to his older stuff.

alfred wrote a really nice review of the new album:

http://www.spin.com/articles/cass-mccombs-big-wheel-and-others-domino/

thank you Alfred for not mentioning that McCombs hates doing press or lives a nomadic existance and all the other crap that most writers can't stop repeating.
I still really like the Manassas song.

oh I don't care for biography

This has been in seriously heavy rotation since it came out. I guess I should go back and listen to his older stuff.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Monday, October 21, 2013 10:57 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dropping The Writ!

A top something favorite album ever for me.

Forgot to report that the deluxe vinyl for this was worth it! Love the packaging and the bonus 7" is great. Album sounds great on record too. Only hiccup was that it reads "Casss McCombs" on the spine, but that might be intentional I guess.

cassssssssss

2 or more extras I can see, 1 extra though? I should write them an angry letter about this.

Dear Sirs or, as you would have it, Sirss,

“I don’t even really want to make records — I’m dissatisfied with the whole medium,” said the singer-songwriter Cass McCombs, who has made seven of them, including the 22-track “Big Wheel and Others,” which he released earlier this month. “It’s a bizarre format in these digital times. The size of the Internet is infinite, so why do we define albums to be a specific length? It’s annoying to have to conform to something so arbitrary.” That’s why his latest, a massive, sprawling tapestry (the extended vinyl edition actually features 25 songs) that jumps from genre to genre, explodes the format. “It’s more like two and a half albums,” McCombs said with a laugh. “I actually had enough material to make a terrible triple album. As much as I love “Sandinista!,” I never thought that was a good idea.”

It's long but I don't mind a bit.

wait till you get to the nine-minute one in which he murmurs "They say Indians are for India" over and over.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 7, 2013 1:45 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm glad you revised this criticism in your review because nothing about this statement is true about the song in question.

yeah it's "They say an Indian doesn't come from India" and it's 8:59.

Saw him play last night. A very good set that didn't just concentrate on songs from the new album. The only disappointing part was 'County Line' with no Rhodes.

He only says that once, too.

xp

That was the main error.

i can't say i get what cass was going for with everything has to be just so. the older version, which was released as a b-side, is great. one of his best melodies in hidden there.

Excellent, jammy show last night in nyc. Highlights were often from guitarist Dan Iead, who got a very Jerry Garcia like tone on his solo for There Can Be Only One, had lovely nimble runs on the pedal steel, and had a huge, jazzy/psychy solo on the standout number Dream Comes True Girl (nearly as skronky as the keyboard solo from this show: http://livewire.auralstates.com/2011/07/28/cass-mccombs-live-at-the-golden-west-cafe/)
Drummer Joe Russo also really great.

my brother and cass! wish i could go. i never go.

https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1532078_669302099774176_5714364121732205858_n.jpg

Go!

recent live show: https://archive.org/details/cm2013-12-13.mk4.rbox
that's the only thing up on the archive at the moment, but hopefully more pop up - i think he is actually a lot better live than on record.

His band was amazing when I saw him. Incredible players, all of them.

OK!

Alternative rock godfathers Meat Puppets will be teaming up with the newer and consistently impressive songwriter Cass McCombs for a co-headlining tour this fall.

10/21 Duck Room @ Blueberry Hill University City, MO
10/22 High Noon Saloon Madison, WI
10/23 Empty Bottle Chicago, IL
10/24 A and R Music Bar Columbus, OH
10/27 Underground Arts Philadelphia, PA
10/28 The Met Pawtucket, RI
10/29 The Sinclair Cambridge, MA
10/30 Showcase Lounge South Burlington, VT
10/31 Rough Trade NYC Brooklyn, NY
11/1 Rough Trade NYC Brooklyn, NY
11/2 Black Cat Washington, DC
11/4 Local 506 Chapel Hill, NC
11/5 Center Stage Atlanta, GA
11/7 Fitzgerald's Houston, TX
11/28 Crescent Ballroom Phoenix, AZ
11/29 The Casbah San Diego, CA
12/2 Troubadour Los Angeles, CA
12/3 The Independent San Francisco, CA
12/5 Neumos Seattle, WA
12/6 Doug Fir Lounge Portland, OR

dammit no mpls, would love to see this bill! that's amazing

so this was kind of a weird pairing. meat puppets were pretty bad imo, there's a weird aggro metal-head vibe going on there that i wasn't into. but cass was good, and he played a 11-minute, dubbed out version of county line
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U5M2LrgtHk

The A and D sides of Big Wheel are pretty much perfect. Have less of a problem with the length of the thing than the Sean interludes, undermines the dusky mood of the whole thing. "Morning Star" is a song that I continue to unpack and unpack

saw a somewhat secret show last night in a small nyc basement. sound was terrible and i left early but the band (including walter martin from the walkmen on organ) turned Don't Vote into an excellent JJ Cale shuffle.

fun recent show of the McCombs Skiffle Players, basically Cass plus Beachwood Sparks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTCvw7uxY4U
According to Dave Scher's blog, this group recorded earlier this year

http://www.treblezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cass-folk-470x470.jpeg

A Folk Set Apart: Rarities, B-Sides & Space Junk, Etc.

01 I Cannot Lie
02 A.Y.D.
03 Oatmeal
04 Twins
05 Minimum Wage
06 Poet’s Day
07 An Other
08 Bradley Manning
09 Evangeline
10 Empty Promises
11 If You Loved Me Before…
12 Three Men Sitting On A Hollow Log
13 Lost River / Old River
14 Old As Angry
15 Texas
16 Night Of The World
17 Traffic Of Souls
18 Catacombs Cow Cow Boogie
19 The State Will Take Care Of Me

!!!

Nice! Looking forward to it.

Me too. Release date?

December 11

cool cover

Looking forward to having these all together, I have a bunch of them already. I don't know:

03 Oatmeal
07 An Other
17 Traffic Of Souls
18 Catacombs Cow Cow Boogie (hoping this is the instrumental from the youtube video i posted way upthread)
19 The State Will Take Care Of Me

only tracks missing that I know are Healing (from the That's That 7") and an earlier version of Everything has to be Just So, which I have an mp3 of but don't know where it came from.

I have been looking for the original version of Everything has to be just so (and cass forum) forever! Where did find it?

Bad Grammar. Also - Mizzell, I took the extended county line video you posted. Glad someone found it.

Haha is that Adam? Tim K. here.

I've got the song on my computer - PM me yr email address!

I like it way better than the album version, btw

Having a hard time getting into this new b-sides / rarities collection. I still like it (I like p much everything this dude does), but there's some pretty skippable stuff on this new one imo. Then again, I didn't love Big Wheel either. I may just prefer Cass in smaller, digestible doses, I think.

I thought I preferred small Cass to big Cass but think this collection might be my favourite 'album' of his

Interesting! What are some favorites? I like a good third of it quite a bit, but of those, I'd heard about five of them before. Some of the earlier "garage-y" stuff doesn't appeal to me at all; one of those tunes sounds like an outtake from Incesticide or something. I wish there was more of the "Edgar Allan Poe meets Morrissey meets Lou Reed" stuff he does so well.