Domino
Not many rock singers could get with away singing “I’m middle class till the day I die” with conviction dripping from their mouths but that’s exactly what Cass McCombs does on “Lionkiller” the lead song on his new LP Dropping the Writ . The song an almost celebratory examination of McCombs’s unremarkably average upbringing underscored with a repetitively snaking guitar line kicks off the album on a strong note and aptly sums up McCombs’s odd appeal. His repertoire is identical to a host of bedroom singer-songwriters but by focusing his lyrics on things like cleaning toilets in a nightclub and being born in a hospital McCombs manages to rise above his introspective lovelorn peers.
It helps that Dropping the Writ finds his songwriting at its most refined. The guitar drum and piano arrangements aren’t going to wow anyone with their complexity but they’re uniformly well-crafted and augment McCombs’s fragile voice and quirky lyrics with a practised ease.
The album only really falters when McCombs abandons his quirks for more standard fare. Without the particularly unglamorous slice-of-life lyrics McCombs’s music too easily descends into the forgettable making the album’s middle section — “Petrified Forest” “Morning Shadows” and “Desert” — a chore to get through. Fortunately listeners are rewarded for their patience with the doo-wop tinged “Crick in my Neck” which finds McCombs having a blast by being as humble and polite as possible. Songs like these are obviously not typical rock star material yet they’re the strongest evidence in support of why McCombs should be one.
