Case Oats - Last Missouri Exit - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Last Missouri Exit, the debut album by Case Oats, is a remarkably assured record. The band-Spencer Tweedy (drums), Max Subar (guitar, pedal steel), Jason Ashworth (bass), Scott Daniel (fiddle), and Nolan Chin (piano, organ)-gelling around Casey Gomez Walker's voice and guitar. Last Missouri Exit is a collection of sharply drawn character studies, Gomez Walker's background in creative writing expressing itself in wry observation and a disarmingly easy sense of the lyric, the profound and profane tumbling out of songs like InchBitter Root LakeInch with the weight of a confessional poem and the ease of a conversation between friends.The throughline from Case Oats' first show to their debut album is trust, in the songs and in their players. Resonating from the messiest chambers of the heart, Last Missouri Exit is a bruised affair, the band swelling around Gomez Walker as she describes coming of age in terms of being loyal to desperately flawed people and eventually, with some distance from home, being true to herself. The songs found their shape live, and initial recordings took place, as Gomez Walker recalls, InchBig Pink-style,Inch in the basement of a house shared by Ashworth, Subar, and touring member Chet Zenor. InchWe tracked these songs over three hot August days with our friends, just trying to capture the energy that existed between us.Inch InchIt was intentionally bare-bones,Inch says Tweedy, who engineered the session with Ashworth and Subar and produced the album. InchWe brought just enough stuff to the basement to be able to record. We were lucky to have played a lot of shows in the months leading up to the session, so we just played like we had been playing, no preciousness.InchThat initial basement session is the home in which Last Missouri Exit grew up, serving both as place of origin and destination as Gomez Walker and Tweedy recorded the vocals in separa