Cass McCombs writes songs for rainy days. Over the last 15 years, he has perfected a specific style of low-key, dusky mood music suited for long, gray weekends spent indoors with the blinds closed. Among his subtlest moments (2011’s Wit’s Ends) and his wildest (2013’s double-album Big Wheel & Others), McCombs’ voice has rarely risen above a conversational croon; his are songs you sing to yourself, wandering around the house, looking for something to do. And judging by “Opposite House,” the first single from Mangy Love, he may be starting to go stir crazy.
In “Opposite House,” McCombs asks a rhetorical question about magnets (and answers it immediately). He deconstructs his refrigerator and then unleashes an army of pet snakes in the hallway, delighting as he watches them “coiling where the mice crawl.” All the while, Angel Olsen provides feathery, restrained backing vocals, subduing her distinctive yodel into something that can comfortably float around McCombs’ quiet, ghostly home. “Why does it rain inside?” they sing together, as a smooth string arrangement and gentle rhythm guitars create an eerily calm, soft rock atmosphere that masks the surrealist nightmare in the lyrics. “When it rains inside, there is nowhere to hide,” McCombs warns, before winking in the mirror: “Which is why I’m all sunshine.”
