★★★★☆
Critics and the listening public at large have spent the last 13-odd years trying to work out Cass McCombs.
Somewhat predictably then, his new record A Folk Set Apart doesn’t so much unlock his mystery as deepen it. A collection of 19 tracks, including B-sides and alternative takes, it’s already been described by McCombs (in typically perverse fashion) as his own favourite album, despite not being an album in the strictest sense of the word. McCombs is the master at taking middle-of-the-road material – check out the deliberately perfunctory title of ‘Three Men Sitting On A Hollow Log’ – and injecting the mundane with the mystic. It’s why so many have labelled him a ‘freak folk’ musician, despite the fact that doesn’t even begin to cover the sheer breadth of his bizarre brand of the bucolic.
Every facet of the singer-songwriter is on display here, from the dork rock of ‘An Other’ to the beautiful tangled twangs of ‘Minimum Wage’. On that level, the work serves as an introduction to McCombs, but first-time listeners should come in expecting more questions than answers.
There’s no use denying that A Folk Set Apart is a love-it-or-hate-it record. But if it works for you, you’ll find it to be one you can obsess over; a distinct portal into another world.
