[photos by John Ruscher for Eardrum NYC]
Cass McCombs has created and performed superb music for nearly a decade. As he has recorded in locations from Baltimore to Southern California to Michigan to Chicago absorbing all of the musical influences that inform his songcraft, Cass remains an enigmatic and solitary performer whose music is as compelling as it is dark. The release of the brilliant Wit’s End (Domino Records) last month has gathered the standard critical praise for McCombs’ work. But Wit’s End is perhaps the album that will ultimately expose him to the wider audience that he has eluded over the last ten years. At a sold out Bowery Ballroom on Thursday night, the good and bad of that fate was obvious from the outset. A talkative and insufficiently attentive audience missed large portions of what was undoubtedly one of the best shows we’ll see all year. This is music that does not jump out at you, as the songs require concentration and close listening to appreciate the musical and lyrical subtleties. Cass requested that the lights be turned all the way down after the first song, and the stage illuminated the band only by the odd wall-of-lightbulbs backdrop thereafter. The band opened the set with the first three songs from Wit’s End — the Laurel Canyon-esque “County Line” is streaming below — and then performed a democratic selection of material from all of Cass’s releases, highlighted by “Don’t Vote”, “Equinox”, and reaching as far back as the title track from his debut EP “Not The Way”. The band matched the mood of the material perfectly and while there were abundant solos and extended jams (“Harmonia” extended past ten minutes), there were no flourishes or inauthentic stage theatrics. After a brief thanks to the crowd, Cass closed the set with a powerful eight-minute version of “Bobby, King of Boy’s Town” before the lights quickly came up. As the crowd filtered out, I couldn’t help but think that half of them had missed a truly great show.
I recorded this set from the balcony rail with the four-microphone rig and the sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!
Thanks to Cass and Domino Records for their courtesy and permission to record this show.
Stream “County Line”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/C1205Cass1102/03.%20County%20Line.mp3]
Direct download of complete show in MP3 files (HERE)
Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].
Cass McCombs
2011-05-12
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY USA
Four-Track Digital Master Recording
Recorded at the Balcony Railing
Neumann KM-150s + DPA 4021’s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac
Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2011-05-14
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:28:04]
01 Buried Alive
02 The Lonely Doll
03 County Line
04 Meet Me Here At Dawn
05 Prima Donna
06 Pregnant Pause
07 Harmonia
08 Meet Me At the Mannequin Gallery [new song]
09 Equinox
10 Don’t Vote
11 Not the Way
12 Aids in Africa
13 When the Bible Was Wrote
14 Bobby, King of Boy’s Town
If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Cass McCombs, visit his website, and purchase Wit’s End from the Domino website [HERE].
Recent Comments