Cass McCombs: Heartmind (bandcamp)

Although the name might not be familiar, if we judge people by the company they keep we'd be impressed by Californian singer-songwriter Cass McCombs' pals: singer-guitarist Steve Gunn (playing Auckland, Wellington and Hastings in October), Arizona's psyche-desert rockers Meat Puppets, Angel Olsen, acclaimed pedal steel player Greg Leisz (touring with Jackson Browne next year) . . .

And Wynonna Judd provides backing vocals to one song on his new Heartmind album.

McCombs is perhaps the finest singer-songwriter most haven't heard of, yet some of his songs rack up tens of millions Spotify streams, and he's now 10 albums into a career.

His music can be broody or elevating, bluesy, tightly wound like the late Elliott Smith, or -- as on Heartmind-- brightly poppy (Karaoke, New Earth), rocking (Music is Blue) or suggesting a narrative (A Blue Blue Band).

But, like a Chinese box revealing another within, his words juxtapose the enigmatically lyrical with the literal and can lean towards the allegorical.

Vice magazine referred to his “Wallmart mysticism” because he lives in, and sings of, the material world but says he's read the Hindu philosophical text Bhagavad Gita since high school.

A dharma bum who, on the eight minute-plus Heartmindtitle track, stretches into a metaphysical meditation about the body and soul before a leisurely instrumental of saxophone and angular drumming which threatens to devolve into free jazz.

McCombs' songs resonate in their detail, as in the moving Unproud Warrior about a young man who enlisted at 17 and lives now with the regret. It's a lament for lost youth and opportunities (“you had more choices than they let on, a soldier is not a cog”) as McCombs mentions S.E. Hinton and Mary Shelley writing their seminal work – The Outsiders and Frankenstein respectively – when they were teenagers, Stephen Crane just 23 when his The Red Badge of Courage was published.

With its supple beat, violin, lap steel by Judd's husband Cactus Moser and saxophone, it lies somewhere between John Prine's Americana, the speak-sing style of Sun Kil Moon (Mark Kozelek) and Van Morrison's Celtic soul.

Elsewhere the catchy pop of Karaoke namechecks classic songs (Stand By Your Man, Unchained Melody) but questions whether the partner's emotions are genuine. Or if, like singing karaoke, just one step removed from reality where it's “all a kind of pantomime”. Then the narrator admits going through the (e)motions too.

Heartmind– its portmanteau title reflecting the dichotomy to be resolved – is a captivatingly complex album rewarding repeated attention and while there's personal loss (Belong to Heaven) there are also bigger ideas considered.

New Earth is breezy with birdsong, yet set the day after the last day on Earth (“a glad day after a very bad day”) when you “thank God time has ended”.

McCombs describes it as “welcoming in a new dawn where wildlife crushes technology”.

Maybe it's that too.

Whatever. Literal or metaphorical death – or the post-apocalypse – has never sounded so weightless, dreamy and bathed in reassuringly warm light.

Heartmind is available digitally at bandcamp here, on CD and limited edition vinyl.