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::k4:
a r t i s t :: Cass McCombs
t i t l e :: Wit's End
d a t e :: 2011-04-11
l a b e l :: Domino Records
g e n r e :: Alternative
s o u r c e :: WEB
b i t r a t e :: 320 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: LAME
t r a c k s :: 8
p l a y t i m e :: 47:20
s i z e :: 114.0MB
tracklist
1 County Line 5:37
2 The Lonely Doll 5:37
3 Buried Alive 5:37
4 Saturday Song 5:12
5 Memory's Stain 7:23
6 Hermit's Cave 4:19
7 Pleasant Shadow Song 4:12
8 A Knock Upon The Door 9:23
releasenotes
Five albums and one EP in, and Cass McCombs still cuts an enigmatic figure.
Here's what we do know: the Californian singer-songwriter wrote some of his
best songs while surfing couches and living in cars between the west and east
coast of America. Even those at the label who picked McCombs up for 2007's
Dropping the Writ don't seem to have got close to the man. "I won't pretend
that I'll ever fully understand Cass," writes Domino Records' Kris Gillespie,
giving the kind of candid account of an artist you never read in press
releases.
No matter, for McCombs is an incredibly honest and perpetually driven
songwriter. Wit's End floats on a sea of lugubrious guitars and laconically
delivered lines that get underneath your skin, such as opener County Line,
when McCombs suddenly sings: "You never really tried to love me."
Buried Alive twists the most suffocating of imagery √ "When I wake up to the
breath of the old, on a sea of black" √ against a subdued melody and tenderly
strummed guitar. On album closer A Knock Upon the Door, McCombs channels
Leonard Cohen circa Songs of Love and Hate in an aureate but ominous finale to
the album.
McCombs has always retained a sense of privacy in his songwriting, the kind
which led Gillespie to advise listeners to enjoy Wit's End alone, late at
night. When the San Francisco Chronicle described him as "delivering too much
information in his songwriting, and too little in conversation", I can believe
it. I've had several interview requests politely declined, and was most
recently asked to write a letter to McCombs in lieu of your usual Q&A. He may
make a frustrating interviewee, but better a man with little to say in front
of a journalist than one with little to say in front of a microphone.
Band-Url: http://www.myspace.com/cassmccombs
Shop-Url: http://tinyurl.com/62l8vob
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Cass_McCombs-Wits_End-WEB-2011-k4