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Rating: "Music infused with eternal grace... beautiful and sweet like opium". (Vice - Album of the Month 10/10)
"Cass McCombs (...) is approaching perfection". (The Sunday Times - 4/5)
"A marvelous collection of poison and ghosts". (Music Week)
"There are echoes of The Smiths, House of Love and even The Bunnymen, but it's just a starting point to push much further ahead. Highly recommended". (Uncut - 4/5)
"The arrangements of PREfection are endowed with enormous richness, melancholy, reverberations of life and death. Those who succumb to its beauty feed on it in every form". (Mojo - 4/5)
I thought I had met him - Cass McCombs - at a concert where you least expect it (after all, even Mark Kozelek went crazy for AC/DC). Then I wasn't so sure, as I understood nothing of what he told me and he signed MIKE-and-something for his autograph. Either it was him (and he was as drunk as I was) or it wasn't him - and then he was more drunk than I was.
Two full works for McCombs (and in between an endless series of singles, EPs, collaborations, and assorted projects) - "A" the first, dating back 14 months ago, album of the year for me and a gem of impressive beauty: like Nick Drake a desolate hopeless outsider, like Will Oldham with even more talent and equal melancholy, a clown in the circus of nostalgia and disillusionment. No wonder: masterpiece.
Now comes "PREfection" in stores, and those expecting a blow of depression will be disappointed. Here we are not talking about Coldplay, U2, R.E.M., and mainstream nonsense: here we wallow in music because there's nowhere else to wallow and everyone changes and no one stays the same and Cass McCombs has grown. "PREfection" is a collection of fractured, dreamy, and desolate songs but this time loud. Above all, "Tourist Woman" and "Sacred Heart", one an acid and intense rock ride, the other a smoky love declaration supported by a lacerating guitar riff.
Even the good old John Peel - shortly before moving to a world better than this - defined the young man as "one of the most gifted songwriters in current indie-rock". Let it be known: in a music world now going crazy where everyone copies everyone and copies themselves, the courage to change is the greatest revolution.
It's up to you now to believe it or not.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
05 Sacred Heart (04:06)
Sacred Heart, surveyed from the summit,
a pantheon, distant as ever,
echoing up the mountainside,
escaped sound, like a kiss upon the forehead
Alas! Jimmy
And all the members of the covenant
Noble scholars,
without you I’d have drowned in gutterwater
Alas!
You, of course, have my infinite gratitude
You, My Most Sacred Heart
Yet I piss and moan for I have ____
Dearly Departed,
we are gathered here today in reverence
Dearly Departed,
we all will return to the soil
Alas!
Alas!
For all my Alas!-es
I cannot mend this massive slashing
Futile beacon!
Cinderella’s in the doghouse
The doghouse
The doghouse
No, love doesn’t always boomerang
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