Cass McCombs: Interior Live Oak

Since the first note of his 2003 debut LP A, from the outside at least, Cass McCombs has been stuck in a time warp and not given a fuck about it.

It’s the Bay Area-born, New York-based songwriter’s frozen-in-time ethos that has always been his greatest boon. No matter what trends come and go, from Dropping the Writ (2007) and Catacombs (2009) to Mangy Love (2016), Heartmind (2002) and everything between, the music of Cass McCombs is timeless.

McCombs is one of the most mysterious songwriters of our time. Humourous and not one to suffer fools, over the years, many of his interviews have possessed an atmosphere that you could cut with a knife, and weaving his persona through song, McCombs’ fearlessness has provided some of the most honest results since the turn of the century.

Perhaps the best example from his excellent new double album, Interior Live Oak, is I Never Dream About Trains. Entangling a love song-like narrative with a tongue-in-cheek swipe at the conservatism in country music (“I never lie in my songs / And I never dream about trains”), it’s one of the most beautiful things McCombs has produced.

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And there’s plenty more of it on Interior Live Oak. Re-acquainting with The Paper Cuts’ Jason Querver and Chris Cohen with appearances from fellow outliers Matt Sweeney (The Hard Quartet) and Mike Bones (Weak Signal, Prison), Interior Live Oak is À la carte Cass. It simply has it all.

The swaying soul-rock of opening cut, Priestess, a song that has everything from panther’s stories, lime rickeys and tuna fish to characters confronting the devil, it sees McCombs blurring the lines between generations, making everything present in time. In this instance, it’s one of the most personal songs on the record (“No one could blame you / For being angry, resentful, vicious / The entire universe deserved it / For being so malicious”).

Aesthetically, Lola Montez Danced the Spider Dance isn’t a world away, but drawn out into the kind of whimsical jams that are dotted throughout McCombs’ body of work. In all its swooning, seven-minute glory, it’s soulful, hippified psych-folk laced with some Steinbeck snapshots for good measure.

Peace and Missionary Bell are far more stripped back. McCombs, streamlining his songcraft with sweet melodic folk that’s like a sea breeze blowing through the hair, and with a line on the former like, “When we say goodbye, we say peace,” it’s quintessential Cass. So too I’m Not Ashamed, although it’s perhaps more tailored for a lazy Sunday morning, as McCombs dials it down into the same realms where he brought us County Line all those years ago.

Then there’s the humour. The venerable Miss Mabee, a concoction of Harry Nilsson and a John Irving tale, as the protagonist takes us through the complexities of love in a witty tale of mind games (“Maybe she’ll lace your boot / Or maybe she’ll polish your flute / Or maybe she’ll dig your root / Or maybe she won’t give a hoot”). Juvenile is equally shrewd – a gleeful demolition of dumb rock with something pervasive and whip-smart (“Mean people suck / Outer space sucks / Authority sucks / You suck, I suck / Primus sucks”).

McCombs then pivots to the stage for some live flavour. Home at Last, backed by Quever’s splashing rhythms and McCombs’ subtle bass grooves, is loose psych that bathes over you like a sundown, while A Girl Named Dogie is the largest sounding moment on Interior Live Oak. With slow motion melodies and big riff trade-offs between McCombs and Bones, it feels more attuned for the masses than any upper-echelon songcraft for the feverish few.

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Who Removed the Cellar Door lands in similar locales, but with added country echoes where you can just about see the pattern emerging through the dusty landscapes. Then there’s the galloping folk-rock of Asphodel, which sees McCombs at the peak of his songwriter powers; the prose, dripping off the page (“A flower grows in the dark / Near the land of dreams / But don’t ask me how I know / Don’t ask mе what it means”).

The aptly titled Diamonds in the Mine rivals it, too. While perhaps a direct reference to all the other songs on the album, it’s equally beguiling (“Turn out the light / Blow out the candle too / Don’t fear the night coming / I’m right beside you”). On Strawberry Moon, McCombs pulls us to more exotic parts of his sound world. Like a soundtrack to the summer, imagery of beaches, pinacolatos and dancing on the shoreline comes flooding through the mind, all while being serenaded by the man himself.

The tourism of sound culminates with Interior Live Oak’s eponymous track. Freight-train blues gazing in the direction of The Grateful Dead, it’s a worthy closer. While the Deads have always stirred gently in the background of his songs, McCombs idiosyncrasies always shine through, and here they shine as bright as ever with an album he was destined to make. The songs on Interior Live Oak, chiselled and refined, to the point where each of them contains the kind of vignettes that leave indelible marks on the mind.

Parting with a double album in 2025 seems like a recipe for disaster, but it’s no surprise that Cass McCombs is the one to accomplish the feat. His fierce belief of all time being present, well and truly harnessed on Interior Live Oak, which could well be his magnum opus.

Interior Live Oak is out now via Domino Recording Co. Purchase from Bandcamp.