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Album Details

• Artist: Cass McCombs
• Album: Prefection
• Label: Monitor/4AD
• Year of Release: 2005
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: bbuckingham on 2005-04-11

A master of mixing moody melodies and impenetrable lyrics, Cass McCombs is a welcome anomaly in the teeming swath of American indiedom. Prefection, McCombs third release and first for 4AD (who picked up McCombs for distribution outside of the US), is striking in its exploration of duality. Light, summery pop songs (Equinox, Sacred Heart) lurk around dark and swampy Factory-esque rockers (Multiple Suns, Tourist Woman).

The sheeny, hazy production is alternately illuminating and obfuscating - distant crashing drums and buzzing, swelling synths frame the songs and bleed into mccombs crooning, yearning vocals.

At the heart of McCombs songs live stunning, gold-spun melodies. The one-two punch of "She's Still Suffering" and "Cuckoo" is breathtaking - the former wrapped in a blanket of 80s glossy pop sheen, a la The Smiths and The Cure, the latter adopting a typical late-era Beatles chord progression that McCombs makes his own by the end of the first verse.

McCombs is the kind of pop classicist one rarely sees on this side of the Atlantic, and Prefection gives evidence that life-affirming, glorious pop can still cohabitate comfortably with substance.

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