Over the past decade, Cass McCombs has established himself as one of our premier songwriters. It’s a career that has twisted and turned, from style to subject, both between records and within them. Diverse, cryptic, vital and refreshingly rebellious — just when you think you have him pinned down, you find you’re on the wrong track.
However, Mangy Love, his Anti Records debut, is McCombs at his most blunt: tackling sociopolitical issues through his uniquely cracked lens of lyrical wit and singular insight.
McCombs uses himself as a mirror to misguided and confounding realities, confronting them head-on: “Rancid Girl” reads like a ZZ Top study in Kardashian politics, “Run Sister Run” a mantra for a misogynistic justice system, “Bum Bum Bum” displays a racist, elitist government through the allegory of sadistic dog breeding; the album is sewn together by a common thread of ‘opposition,’ most directly articulated in “Opposite House”, with allusions to mental illness. ‘Laughter Is The Best Medicine’ provides a possible recipe for healing, with the help of an authentic medicine man, the legendary Rev. Goat Carson. The severity of his lyrics is contrasted by the music, which ventures into groovy realms of Philly soul, NorCal psychedelia and New York paranoia punk, articulating the spontaneity and joy of his live show better than ever before.
The record is unquestionably a work of great studio aptitude: a carefully arranged, high-fidelity production by veteran Rob Schnapf and Dan Horne. And as usual, McCombs is joined by many notable members of his eclectic musical tribe, whose names are proudly displayed on the back cover.
Mostly written during a bitter New York City winter and while traveling in Ireland, Mangy Love is Cass at the top of his game, reaching new sonic heights, creatively evolving lyrically, and resulting in his most provocative and complete record yet.

It took four years for The Lumineers to follow up their platinum-plus, multi-Grammy-nominated, self-titled debut – which spent 46 weeks on the Billboard 200 and peaked at #2 -- but Cleopatra is well worth the wait. After exploding onto the scene with their monster single, “Ho Hey” (which spent a staggering 62 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #3) and its follow-up, “Stubborn Love” (recently featured on President Barack Obama’s Spotify playlist), The Lumineers spent a solid three years touring six of the seven continents. During that time, The Lumineers – whose original members Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites founded the band in Ramsey, New Jersey back in 2002 -- earned a pair of Grammy nominations (Best New Artist, Best Americana Album), contributed two songs to The Hunger Games franchise (including the hit Jennifer Lawrence/James Newton Howard collaboration, “The Hanging Tree”) and sold an impressive 1.7 million albums in the U.S., and 3 million worldwide. Cleopatra proves Schultz and Fraites – along with cellist/vocalist Neyla Pekarek– are neither taking their good fortune for granted, nor sitting back on their laurels. With the help of producer Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers, The Avett Brothers), the man Wesley calls “our shaman,” the band ensconced themselves in Clubhouse, a recording studio high atop a hill in rural Rhinebeck, N.Y., not far from Woodstock. The Lumineers then set about trying to make musical sense of their three-year-plus roller coaster ride. Their skill at setting a visual story to music comes through amidst the delicate, deceptively simple acoustic soundscapes. This time, though, bassist Byron Isaac provides a firm, low-end on the apocalyptic opener “Sleep on the Floor,” a ghostly tune about getting out of town before the “subways flood [and] the bridges break.” It’s a densely packed, cinematic song that echoes Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden – which were models for the record alongside Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Cleopatra also deals with what Wesley terms “the elephant in the room,” the band’s success and the way it can sometimes put a target on your back. The syncopated piano rolls in “Ophelia” (“I got a little paycheck/You got big plans/You gotta move/I don’t feel nothin’ at all”), the organic sound of fingers squeaking on guitar strings in “Angela” (“The strangers in this town/They raise you up just to cut you down”) and the Faustian bargain described in “My Eyes” (“Oh, the devil’s inside/You open the door/You gave him a ride/Too young to know/Too old to admit/But you couldn’t see how it ends”) consider the perils of getting what you wish for, with everyone knowing your name, and your songs. The band had total artistic freedom in writing and recording the album, so Wesley and Jer pushed the envelope on experimental tracks like the stream-of-consciousness, purposely lo-fi “Sick in the Head,” the yearning, piano chord build-up of “In the Light,” or the closing orchestral instrumental, the aptly titled coda, “Patience.” “We continue to make the kind of records we want to,” says Wesley. “We believe in this music. It’s a true labor of love. We just want to keep reaching more people with our songs.” Given the evidence on The Lumineers’ eagerly anticipated sophomore album Cleopatra, that shouldn’t be a problem.

22, A Million is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding. The album’s 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence. If Bon Iver, Bon Iver built a habitat rooted in physical spaces, then 22, A Million is the letting go of that attachment to a place.