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Q MagazineOct 11, 2013You plug it in your ears in June and three months later you've barely listened to anything else. Highly recommended. [Nov 2013, p.104]
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Oct 15, 2013Spanning 22 tracks and the great sprawl of a nation, Big Wheel and Others compiles more of these vital impressions than any of McCombs’ previous releases, documenting something so damned beautifully alive--so restless and sensual and swinging and true--the album accrues power by virtue of its breadth.
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Oct 14, 2013What richly rewarding, flourishing, beautiful songs they are.
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Nov 6, 2014Gentle outlaw Cass McCombs luxuriates in sunlit California landscapes, weaving offbeat tales of carousing and yearning on Big Wheel and Others.
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Dec 5, 2013Aside from the nine-minute rambling of “Everything Has to Be Just-so,” (coming at the end of the first disc, making it easy to skip), McCombs pulls off the rare feat of a double-disc that never runs short on inspiration or steam.
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Oct 22, 2013Big Wheel and Others represents McCombs’ most transient yet memorable volume of song-carved verse yet.
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Oct 21, 2013He’s into strange turns and oblique repetition, but as with some of his past records, he will come at you every once in a while with a single track that will pin you down with its beauty. Like a John Lennon love song. There’s a few of those here: “Angel Blood,” “Dealing” and “Untitled Spain Song.”
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MagnetOct 18, 2013Throughout, McCombs hits a brilliantly unpredictable songwriting stride. [No. 103, p.57]
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Oct 17, 2013McCombs tries on many different hats, but has the skill to produce mostly positive results.
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Oct 17, 2013McCombs’s songwriting has become less opaque and more direct, without losing any of his signature poetry, mystery and dark humour.
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Oct 11, 2013It’s a record to get lost in, and to find yourself in. And to put it as plainly as possible: it’s a record as emotionally and musically rewarding as anything Cass McCombs has ever released.
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Oct 18, 2013These songs have more muscle than the typical McCombs song, with “Wheel” chugging like V-12 pistons, and “Satan” smoldering with sticky saxophone smears. This befits their subject matter as well as the vibe of the album, on which McCombs plays with genre more explicitly than usual.
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Oct 30, 2013Big Wheel just keeps rolling along, a moody, ambitious collection touching on travel, impermanence, the soul, manhood, statehood, and then some.
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Oct 21, 2013There is no getting around the fact Big Wheel And Others is a slog on first listen and will always remain so for some. Yet McCombs is nothing if not a songwriter who knows catchiness: somehow, each of these songs is memorable for its structure and compositional bite, though some are better than others.
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Oct 18, 2013McCombs doesn’t want to be known any better than he already is, but here, for once, he shows that he understands everyone else a far lot better than he has to date.
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Oct 14, 2013It will take a truly patient listener to not just sit through the album, but to parse McCombs’ language and internalize the spare arrangements.
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UncutOct 10, 2013A bit of editing might not have gone astray, but it's hard to begrudge McCombs space to roam when his horizon is so impressively broad. [Nov 2013, p.75]
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Oct 16, 2013What it really lacks then is quality control and what it requires is a good deal of patience but, despite the occasions when it falters, elsewhere it’s consistently good, and sporadically brilliant.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 5
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Mixed: 1 out of 5
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Negative: 0 out of 5
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Feb 20, 2014