Cass McCombs at the Workman’s, Dublin, 11th of January 2014
Having lived the life of a somewhat nomadic adulthood, Cass McCombs has become something of a mysterious wandering minstrel. As such, he is probably used to playing places like the Workman’s, with its aesthetic somewhere between a village hall and the back of a pub.
Before the Californian took to the stage, Myles Manley was tasked with warming the crowd up. The Dubliner strikes a fragile figure on stage; a skinny man in hand-me-down clothes with an aching voice and an acoustic guitar that seems to have spent too many days left out in the rain. His set of semi-acoustic songs serves as perfect appetiser to the main course of McCombs, and he leaves the stage with I Fuck Your Wife before his twee, aching voice becomes grating.
McCombs enters in over-sized and comfortable shoes: more in the style of 90s’ grunge than the hipster folk singer-songwriter he can appear on his albums. Opener Love Thine Enemy shows that he can rock live too. He is quite happy to improvise with his supporting band, creating a discordant cacophony mid-song.
But McCombs is not committed to rocking out and flits between genres throughout the show, from the big rock sounds of Love Thine Enemy to the island rhythms of When the Bible was Wrote to the almost Neil Young country rock of Prima Donna, complete with Americana tinged steel guitar.
The audience, for their part, are mostly happy to stand quietly as McCombs leads them beguilingly through his back catalogue – though one attendee insists on calling for The Same Thing at any given opportunity. McCombs never betrays any emotion on stage and never engages in any form of banter with the crowd, so it is a testament to his song writing and composition that the few murmurs from the crowd never catch on.
The show does not hit all the right notes however and a run of more mellow tunes around the middle of the set – including Angel Blood and Brighter! from new album ‘Big Wheel and Others’ – seems to float off into the Workman’s air without leaving much of an impact. Perhaps their intimacy is lost in a fully electric setting. That’s That and Honesty is No Excuse (for which he has to refer to his notes) take things back on track soon though.
On There Can Be Only One – we’re not sure if it was penned for the mooted new Highlander film or not – McCombs and his band loose their musical constraints once again and put on a display of outstanding musicianship. It proves one of the highlights of the show which soon ends following the fantastic encore of The Same Thing.
Though not a show that grabbed you and refused to let you go, McCombs gives the crowd more than their money’s worth in terms of songs and performance. He may not be the new Elliott Smith, as he has been touted in some circles, but more of this Cass and we’ll be happy.
Cass McCombs Photo Gallery
Photos: Colm Kelly
