"Heartmind": Cass McCombs' new release

Ten albums in, does anyone know the real Cass McCombs? The Californian singer-songwriter has always evaded easy categorization, breezing through various scenes and US cities like musical weather; from his stripped-back Americana foundations, his music has flitted stylistically, often across the same record, from folk to jazz to art-pop to soft rock. That McCombs’ thoughts reveal themselves through a curious, arms-length storytelling – unreliable narration, oblique references, quirky non-sequiturs - only adds to an odd sense of unknowability: his music has hidden layers and double meanings; a sleight-of-hand that leaves his songs open to interpretation. It has perhaps impeded his success, which remains cult-like.

Now here he is, after more than 20 years, wondering aloud if there is more to life than music after all. “Once upon a time I convinced myself music was all there was,” he sings over the scuzzy riff of Music Is Blue. Later, on Belong to Heaven, he sings, “Music was all we needed” in a past tense that suggests, at 44, life has browbeaten him around the edges.

In some ways, that is true. Heartmind was written during a period of significant loss: the sleeve-notes come with a dedication to three friends whose deaths are referenced throughout. With the AOR rocker Belong To Heaven - "I hope you find peace at last” - McCombs is at his most honest, a direct bolt among the ambiguity.

The successor to 2019’s Tip Of The Sphere comes after a fertile period of collaboration. Latterly, McCombs has teamed up with, variously, Steve Gunn, Tinariwen and Blake Mills, reworked his old song Don’t Vote with Angel Olsen, Bob Weir and Noam Chomsky, and started a new band with Wynonna Judd, who adds sumptuous backing vocals to lead track Unproud Warrior.

With three producers on board - Shahzad Ismaily, Buddy Ross, and Ariel Rechtshaid, who has been with McCombs since his 2009 classic Catacombs - and aid from Danielle Haim, Joe Russo and Cactus Moser among others, Heartmind continues that spirit of collectiveness. It is a warm and free record, benefitting from the improvised jam sessions that took place on both US coasts in Brooklyn and Burbank. 

You can feel the sense of openness at either end of Heartmind’s musical spectrum. On Karaoke, a sunny folk-pop earworm that compares a second- rate relationship to singing in front of strangers in a bar - “Are you going to Stand By Your Man/or are you just karaoke?” he sings drolly — and the west coast sunset-strum of year zero anthem New Earth, the music is shot through with optimism (even if, in McCombs-style, it’s unclear if he is the protagonist of the former, or if he’s truly advocating for a cultural reset in the latter).

Then you have A Blue, Blue Band, a lengthy, lush, vaguely 90s Leonard Cohen-esque country-folk fete and the closing title track, which uses most of its eight-plus minutes to pursue a cleansing free-form jazz. Album centrepiece Unproud Warrior marries both styles with a drawn-out folk-jazz lament that uses a soldier’s discharge to consider the consequences of our own choices. It’s a deft piece of storytelling, which gives no judgements, or answers. It’s McCombs as we best know him, and as he concludes on Music Is Blue: “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”