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Cass McCombs: The Politics Of Dancing

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Cass McCombs addresses issues of gender, race and power on his new LP

“No one likes a poetic musician; we’re supposed to be meatheads,” says Cass McCombs, laughing. He’s been talking about Mangy Love, his eighth full-length, not including two other projects he’s been involved with in the last year: odd ’n’ sods collection A Folk Set Apart and the Skiffle Players’ Skifflin’, which featured McCombs alongside Neal Casal, Farmer Dave Scherr and other West Coast pals.

McCombs is no meathead. Mangy Love is, in large part, a political album that addresses issues of gender, race and power. It’s about inclusion and justice. It’s also funny, sly and soulful. McCombs is a musical omnivore, and his work has ranged from hushed indie-folk to churning rock ’n’ roll to lo-fi, noisy experiments. He recently played a show in the band of the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh (he’s also played with the Dead’s Bob Weir—McCombs grew up in the Bay Area, and the Dead is in his DNA).

McCombs had been listening to a lot of Sly Stone and Shuggie Otis in the years leading up to Mangy Love, and the album also draws on reggae, soca and South American styles and even includes some operatic backing vocals. He credits the vibe to Dan Horne, the album’s bass player and co-producer (along with McCombs and veteran Rob Schnapf). But the choice to incorporate the soulful styles was thematic as well.

“Lyrically, it has a lot to do with political ideas of gender and race and ideas of healing, and we wanted to make a musical lexicon of revolutionary concepts in music,” he says. “I think that should extend everywhere in music from Sly And The Family Stone to, like, the Cure, and I guess the Dead and Beatles, whatever: anything that represents that revolutionary attitude. I’m not talking politically revolutionary, I’m talking musically. A lot of revolutionary songs are not explicitly political.”

Songs such as “Run Sister Run” and “Bum Bum Bum” are indeed explicitly political (“Men, respect your sister and respect your Queen,” he sings on “Run Sister Run”), but there’s also plenty of humor. Witness the seemingly misogynist “Rancid Girl,” with lines like “You’re bad, I mean you smell bad/You talk a lot, and it’s always bad.”

“It should be funny, I guess,” McCombs says, and then laughs. “It’s a love song. It’s like ‘Super Freak,’ Rick James, like that: ‘You’re amazing and you’re crazy and you’re nasty.’ It’s a different kind of love song. How does that fit in? Jesus. Maybe it’s preparing the listener for a jacked perspective on beauty. I think a lot of our ideas, in this case of beauty, but it could be of race or gender or whatever, are bankrupt. I think it’s fun to fuck with that and joke around with that. I appreciate when writers or musicians fuck with my seriously held beliefs about things that I thought were real and then some guy or lady obliterates them. Thank you! It’s fun to be obliterated.”

On “Cry,” McCombs sings, “No more cliché songs,” and the wide-ranging Mangy Love lives up to that goal in its political ideals, its overt and subtle jokes, and even in its optimism.

“There might be a lot of songs on the record that talk about race and gender,” says McCombs. “But there are other songs that talk about healing and earth and food and all the good stuff—the loving caring things we need to do for ourselves and others.”

—Steve Klinge