Cass McCombs’ “Bum Bum Bum” Epitomizes His Elegance

The Cass McCombs song I happen to go back to most often is “County Line,” the opening track from his fifth album, 2011’s WIT’S END. Musically, it’s so languid that it almost dares you to notice it, an anachronistic mix of early-’70s AM gold with a whiff of Quiet Storm falsetto. But the evocative imagery of this unchanging county, the naked-to-the-bone rawness of McCombs’ declarations toward an old love, and the moments where words fail him entirely aside from “whoa, whoa, whoa”—well, it all adds up to something quietly devastating, a track you wouldn’t put on at a party but might savor some misty evening like the last of the whiskey. McCombs’ instrumental sophistication and lyrical pokes in the eye have only intensified since then, over 2011 follow-up Humor Risk and 2013’s Big Wheel and Others.

But “Bum Bum Bum,” from his just-out album Mangy Love—another opening track, another point of surpassing language—could be a new McCombs go-to. His current band helps epitomize the low-key, lived-in luxuriousness of his sound, with neatly polished electric guitars and burbling organ streaked here by an occasional zap of synth, while the cryptic singer who once proclaimed that “pain and love are the same thing” manages to sound simultaneously laid-back and seized with logorrhea. Syllables collide as McComb somehow ever so calmly issues prophecies about topics gleaming with grim sociopolitical intent: rivers of blood congealing, “whitebread artists,” letters to Congress, the Ku Klux Klan. OK, so the rainy-day crossword puzzle of Angel Olsen-graced fellow Mangy Love stunner “Opposite House” may end up getting just as many plays around here. But for as long as it takes to parse this one, it’ll be tough to shake off the suspiciously gentle refrain, which could be a punchline or fate knocking at the door: bum, bum, bum.

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