Big Wheel and Others
Starting with a recorded snippet from Ralph Arlyck’s 1970 documentary *Sean*, where a four-and-a-half-year-old child casually discusses drug use in a hippie household in San Francisco, Cass McCombs’ double album *Big Wheel and Others* starts its long journey through a California state of mind, which includes songs that lurch with a Grateful Dead–like flow and others that capture a laid-back country-rock sound. “Brighter!” shows up twice on the album: McCombs handles a sweet falsetto alongside pedal steel guitar for version one, and there\'s a guest vocal from actress-singer Karen Black (who died before this album\'s release) on version two. “Joe Murder” has a Neil Young, *On the Beach*–style churn. For nine minutes, “Everything Has to Be Just-So” plays like a bizarro version of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” The silly “Satan Is My Toy” blasts off with an early-\'70s hard boogie, while a cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Honesty Is No Excuse” feels like another lost country-rock number.
Big Wheel and Others is Cass McCombs’ seventh-and-a-half album and the follow-up to 2011’s pair of releases WIT’S END and Humor Risk. Big Wheel and Others comprises twenty-two songs (or, as they are more often and unfortunately known in the After Compact Disc—hereafter “ACD” era—tracks). But “double album” implies bloat, prog, and concept, so, let’s stick with “songs.” Big Wheel and Others is a bundle, a bindle, a hay bale, and an oil barrel of songs. Some of the genres that are to be found in varying degrees in the songs on this album are: Road songs, rock songs, folk songs, blues songs, country songs, rhythm and blues songs, skronk non-songs, cinema songs, cult songs, poem songs, jams, and ballads - to use however you wish.
Cass McCombs’ sprawling seventh full-length takes root in the history and mythos of the American West. Across its 85 minutes, he crafts a cosmology out of Western characters from the past two centuries and covers most of the musical themes and narrative fixations he's drawn upon since his 2003 debut.
No sprawling space odyssey theme, no acoustic flipside; just lots and lots of Cass McCombs songs.
Following two albums in 2011, the nomadic McCombs returns with a 22-song double album where quantity just about outweighs quality.
I'm going to tell a story about a song, because I think it matters. Ten years ago, Cass McCombs recorded "Bobby, King of Boys Town," a track that's as good as any other.
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California troubadour Cass McCombs might just be the most famous hobo you could name.
Cass McCombs returns with a double album, drifting around the genre map and proving his prolificacy can't depend on any particular narrative, any overarching marketable story beyond, perhaps, the utilitarian version/vision of songcraft.
Review of 'Big Wheel And Others' by 'Cass McCombs'. The first single is "There Can Be Only One". The album comes out October 16th via Domino Records.