Événement

CASS MCCOMBS & LOWER DENS

Cass McCombs is a working artist whose material has as many faces as there are "fat cities" that he's called home. Think of a parade of troubadours. Some of them are young, fresh-faced and mischievous, weaving fairy tales of innocence and idealism. Others are ragged, weathered poets, whose hearts in contrast are comforted more by religious ballads and bittersweet songs of betrayal. Nevertheless they forge ahead together, singing as one, united, all part of the same parade.

Since getting started out west, slumming it up north, working himself like a dog out east, making a go for it down south, doing his time overseas, and now living in the middle of the country where rock and roll was born, Cass McCombs has made a mysterious and mythological moniker. He writes songs for both the streets and the priests, the seers and the school children, friends and enemies, for suburban families and whatever's left of the ivory tower.

As of late, besides recording and writing, he's been working on developing esoteric artistic models which aim to unite the arts in these times of "corruption and perversity"; also his wife just got a cat who he nicknamed "Hi-tone."

Swarming guitar fuzz, bass waves, Jana Hunter's voice, and insistent drum throbs are the core components of Baltimore's Lower Dens. Hunter, sometimes known for intimate, ghost-heavy weird-fi, is now writing and playing with a group that might get filed as new wave, or drone pop, or post-punk. With due deference to her solo work, we're very glad.

The swarming wave-throb, coupled with Hunter's lyrics and redolent, charred voice, wrecks. The band's first record, Twin-Hand Movement, is eleven perfect songs long. From opener "Blue & Silver" (anxiety mounts at a quick clip until the final climactic release) to "Plastic & Powder" (a churning, narcotic slow-burner) to "Hospice Gates" (penultimate album cut, proud weirdo anthem, possible creative zenith), not one is a space-taker. They're rife with the survivalist paranoia you'd expect from residents of a post-urban port hole (and this particular songwriter), crafted methodically and beautifully, and carry you enthusiastically out into the rolling breaks of industrial filth-water.