Mangy Love CD

Now seven albums into a career as a celebrated yet understated singer-songwriter, Cass McCombs occupies a unique promontory - his music remains possessed of a uniquely laid-back charm, influenced by West Coast rock and funk and topped off by his easy-going falsetto, yet his lyrics bite hard, essaying the iniquities and inequalities of the modern era with pithy panache and even earning him comparisons to Samuel Beckett in the process. 'Mangy Love' is the clearest articulation of this dichotomy to date, so it's no surprise that it's also his darkest, most compelling and ambitious to date - the sound of a modern maverick comfortable with his own paradoxes, if not those of the wider world.