Cass McCombs is a man who keeps to the shadows. He’s a notoriously slippery interviewee, and is generally controlling about what aspects of himself he reveals to the public. It should be no surprise, then, that when the enigmatic musician performed at the Casbah on Thursday, he did so in near-darkness. McCombs’s mellow set may have had more in common with his somnambulant album Wit’s End than the comparatively upbeat Humor Risk, but the beauty of his songwriting was always visible, no matter how (literally or figuratively) dark it got.

Photos – Cass McCombs at the Casbah – December 1, 2011