Heartmind (2022)/ McCombs, Cass

Cass McCombs’s 10th album is an easy, rolling record that grapples with inner complexity, telling stories about musicians and soldiers, lovers and seekers. Even as this seasoned US singer-songwriter butts up against philosophical quandaries or quotes from Sufism, he never loses track of the everyday. When he isn’t making singular records, McCombs has worked in demolition and crashed on couches; his is a landscape of fast-food restaurants and karaoke machines, where vans break down, people make mistakes and die too soon. A gentle, psychedelic wash glazes this set of songs whose musical erudition is worn lightly. This album of knotty nuance bathed in melodic succour is formally dedicated to McCombs’s recently fallen musical comrades, Chet JR White, Sam Jayne and Neal Casal, who “surrendered undefeated”. (Kitty Empie, The Guardian, 21 August 2022)|