Artist Cass McCombs

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Cass McCombs

Cass McCombs is a wanderer in an era that values fixity, and an elusive character in these heady days of blog-related oversharing. (The man doesn’t conduct interviews over the phone, and no one knows very much about him.) One thing that’s clear: McCombs is a melodic savant, working harder on every album to fuse the pop of the ’50s and ’60s with his deeply intimate—and sometimes very poignant—sense of narrative. That’s certainly true of McCombs’ latest two records, Humor Risk and Wit’s End: The latter’s “County Line” is a slow, McCartney-esque number that’s as lonely as its arrangement is sparse.

Updated 01/11/2012