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Cass
McCombs was born in California in 1977. He began playing
guitar at the age of 14 and has a public high school education.
Since, he has traveled and lived in many places.
His fi rst collection of recorded songs, an EP entitled
Not The Way, was released in 2002 by Monitor Records of
Baltimore, MD, followed the next year by a full-length,
A, also on Monitor. Both albums were recorded in San Francisco
and inspired partly by the events surrounding 9/11/01
and his experience living in New York City at that time.
4AD Records of London began to license the albums abroad.
In 2005, now joined by a band, McCombs released a concept-album,
PREfection, through Monitor/4AD. Recorded very quickly
in Michigan during the icy month of February, PREfection
experiments with diverse lyrical subject matter. Although
the band dissipated, McCombs performed extensively in
the U.S. throughout the next year, mostly as an opening
act in the lower rock circuit, picking up band members
where he could. Over the years, the live band has changed
so frequently, change itself could be considered a theme.
Ranging from three to eight pieces, electric or acoustic,
McCombs has always been fortunate to have his songs interpreted
by innovative musicians. Yet, just as PREfection was released,
nearly all of his working relationships vanished in a
matter of weeks, and inevitably he turned his thoughts
to making another record.
His current release, Dropping the Writ, represents yet
another shift. Most of the songs were written when McCombs
moved back to California, this time southern, in the fall
of 2005. Assisted by friends, including some who had contributed
to A, the new album was recorded partially in a studio
as well as in the solitude of his newfound home. The music
alternates between mania and wonder, within a song-form
that McCombs continues to expand upon lyrically, often
with the humorous, wry use of stories plucked from his
own life experience. Dropping the Writ, an informal term
which Wikipedia defi nes as "the procedure in some
government systems where the head of government goes to
the head of state and formally advise them to dissolve
parliament," is the fi rst release by McCombs on
Domino Records of London.
McCombs spent just enough time in Southern California
to record the album and read Dianetics. He currently lives
in Chicago, Illinois. |
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Dropping
The Writ
Domino
October 9, 2007 |
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