Cass McCombs - Humor Risk

Cass McCombs does things his way: if he feels like abstaining from the circus of the music media cycle then he will; if he wants to write a screenplay awash with semi-prophetic rant (think Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain – an excerpt is available on his absurdly clunky website) then he will; if he feels like releasing two collections of unobtrusively original songs written in his comfortingly familiar yet bizarrely idiosyncratic style within the space of six months, then he damn well will.

Taking its name from a Marx Brothers’ film, Humor Risk has been touted as the sunnier counterpart to the claustrophobic Wit’s End released back in April. Though it’d be a stretch to call it optimistic, first single ‘Robin Egg Blue’ is easily the most upbeat track McCombs has written since ‘Dream Come True Girl’ from fourth album Catacombs, a levity perhaps stemming from a letting go of former melancholy, with McCombs admitting “what’s done is done”. Unlike the uncanny stasis towards which Wit’s End groped its way, most songs here possess some measure of energy and groove, whether it be the grunge of ‘Love Thine Enemy’, the supple warmth of ‘The Living Word’ or the mid-tempo rock of highlight ‘The Same Thing’.

But McCombs seems incapable of ignoring inner darkness completely. Straddling the album’s mid-point, ‘To Every Man His Chimera’ provides the doom-laden rock on which the other songs pivot, McCombs crying with a strangled yelp “it’s you again”, as though catching sight of his own steel-eyed doppelganger in the mirror. It’s the exception however, ‘Mariah (Sketch)’ closing the record with a tender, lo-fi beauty.

If most pop music is Rice Bubbles, then Cass McCombs writes musical quinoa.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 437, November 7th 2011