Cass McCombs
Interior Live Oak
DOMINO
Over the course of 13 studio efforts, a compilation, and an EP released over the past 25 years, Cass McCombs has established himself as an artist of heroic stature. It’s safe to say the songwriter is on a roll—and not a stretch to declare that the last four years, during which he’s released as many full-lengths, have captured him in peak form. Some may discount 2023’s Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs Sing and Play New Folk Songs for Children as a silly exercise in, well, childishness; I have a two-word reply to those snobs: “Jonathan Richman.” Others may claim that 2024’s Seed Cake on Leap Year doesn’t qualify as part of McCombs’ major-league streak, either, since it culled unreleased tunes from 1999 and 2000, but those detractors may not have listened closely to “Anchor Child,” “Baby,” and “I’ve Played This Song Before”—songs strong enough that they warranted him to tour behind the collection.
Which brings us to Interior Live Oak, an album that cannot be denied as the pinnacle of McCombs’ lyric and songwriting acuity. The vignettes he paints with his voice and guitar evoke the Old South, Bible-thumping services, inexorable romantic bonds—and, of course, existentialism, transcendentalism, and mortality (c.f. “Asphodel” and “Home at Last”). This critic’s verse of choice appears in the song “Van Wyck Expressway”: “Human life is sleeping life / No experience here / I have no memory of where I’m from / Or who I used to bе / Shredded tires, bits of glass / Cakеs of spilled gas / Wheels passing by my head / That's where I make my bed.”
From the second the needle drops onto Interior Live Oak ’til the moment it ascends, it’s as if we’re overhearing a conversation between Henry David Thoreau, Nick Cave, Thom Gunn, and Mark Kozelek (who might appreciate McCombs’ blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dig at Primus on “Juvenile”). If that sounds like a dismal dinner party to you, don’t expect to be won over by this record. But if that’s the dream you long for every night when your head hits the pillow, by all means do.
