CASS MCCOMBS 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: This collection takes us back to singer/songwriter Cass McCombs formative years, offering up music recorded between 1999 and 2001 while he was living in San Francisco. McCoombs subsequently washed up in New York, on the back of extensive touring of the United States, and bagged a deal with 4AD. Effectively, this is an "origin story" release that showcases material laid to tape in a Bay Area apartment, rather than a professional studio. Atmospheric and naturally lo-fi, the recordings are rooted in a laidback Americana and electric neo-folk, albeit with a woozy, dreamy and meditative, effects-laden finish. Sparse, heady and with a vocal style that leans towards 'Screamadelica' era Bobby Gillespie, it's a fine collection of previously unheard gems.

Review: Now seven albums into a career as a celebrated yet understated singer-songwriter, Cass McCombs occupies a unique promontory - his music remains possessed of a uniquely laid-back charm, influenced by West Coast rock and funk and topped off by his easy-going falsetto, yet his lyrics bite hard, essaying the iniquities and inequalities of the modern era with pithy panache and even earning him comparisons to Samuel Beckett in the process. 'Mangy Love' is the clearest articulation of this dichotomy to date, so it's no surprise that it's also his darkest, most compelling and ambitious to date - the sound of a modern maverick comfortable with his own paradoxes, if not those of the wider world.