Cass McCombs
PREfection

THE REVIEW

"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.