Cass Mccombs - Prefection

Released: 06/09/24

This week sees a number of Cass McCombs reissues “ PREfection,A,andNot the Way“and while it's so hard to pick just one, I've gone with 2005'sPREfectionsimply because it features the sublime Sacred Heart', which is not only one of my favourite McCombs songs, but one of my favourite songs period. It sounds like a top-tier Smiths track, due to its Johnny Marr-like riff, and because McCombs evokes Morrissey not only vocally, but also lyrically, liberally throwing in literary Alas!-es amid archaic funereal speech: Dearly Departed, we are gathered here today in reverence / Dearly Departed, we all will return to the soil ¦ “ all the more effective given its strange juxtaposition with the joyous ecstasy of the music.

While the swampy, glam Multiple Suns', too, could fit right in onMeat is Murder,PREfectionis typical of McCombs' early work in that its diverse array of tracks span numerous tones and genres, from the heady garage-psych of Tourist Woman', which features a beautiful Hammond keyboard refrain of which The Doors' Ray Manzarek would be proud; to the lovely Motown shuffle of Subtraction' (kind of like Martha and the Vandellas' Heat Wave' on downers); to the plaintive, heartbreaking Cuckoo', which is as good as anything the late, great Elliott Smith ever wrote.