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Dec 17, 2015Usually such an album would never be the place to start for a newcomer to the act in question, yet so comprehensively does this explore McCombs' multiple directions, there is a case to be made that A Folk Set Apart could be a suitable primer.
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Dec 14, 2015The cumulative effect is one of a dizzy America, and one that would make even less sense if ever unpicked. Much like the Americana of McCombs; gloriously messy.
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Dec 11, 2015A Folk Set Apart demonstrates not just his punk rock side, but all of the many facets McCombs has shown over the years. It would be an odd place to start your voyage of discovery, but then odd is kind of McCombs' middle name--so wander in.
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Dec 10, 2015Considered as a retelling of McCombs’s career thus far, A Folk Set Apart mostly agrees with the original tale, but adds some new aesthetic information.
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Q MagazineDec 9, 2015It works as an excellent overview of his career. [Jan 2016, p.118]
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UncutDec 9, 2015It's a mixed bag in the best, revelatory sense. [Jan 2016, p.91]
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Dec 9, 2015A Folk Set Apart isn't where you'd go to contextualize McCombs, but it exhibits his dynamism.
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Feb 1, 2016While A Folk Set Apart doesn’t represent his best work, it still makes sense in his canon. The alternate imagination he’s offered fans is yet another sturdy exercise in self disassembly and songcraft, which Cass McCombs can’t help but nail.
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Dec 22, 2015As is typical with this decidedly atypical songwriter, the humor is wry (sometimes morbidly so), the observations astute, and the glimmers of earnestness disarming.
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Dec 11, 2015By the nature of its content and assemblage, there's not a lot of flow on A Folk Set Apart and some of the tracks might have best been left behind, but there is enough strong material here to attract new fans and provide longtime listeners a deeper look into McCombs' curious world.
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Dec 9, 2015A Folk Set Apart is scattered by nature but it has some of these moments, too--moments in which some line or turn that at first sounds unnatural becomes a signal both of McCombs' quiet confidence and of his casual rebellion against the idea of how songs are supposed to go.
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MojoJan 12, 2016Sessions and collaborations abound, finally collected here. [Feb 2016, p. 104]
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Dec 18, 2015It’s nowhere near his best work--it’s clear why tracks like ‘Oatmeal’ and 'Catacombs Cow Cow Boogie’ didn’t make his albums--but Cass McCombs' cutting room floor is grimier than most, and this record is a consistently intriguing portrait of the odds and sods of a fascinating career. Listen to it, then buy his entire back catalogue.
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Dec 14, 2015You might argue that McCombs’s albums are idiosyncratic and varied affairs, and so it is here. But not so you’d complain.
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Dec 9, 2015Yes, B-sides and rarities are sort of supposed to feel rough or incomplete, but A Folk Set Apart seems to be characterised far more by its misguided decisions than by its lack of polish or perfection.