Like the surrealist accompanying Jonny Look-directed music video, folk-rock crooner Cass McCombs' "Opposite House" is filled with inexplicable beauty:
'The ceiling is on the floorFloor in the refrigeratorWhat of the door?It's there no moreWhen it rains insideThere is nowhere to hideWhich is whyI'm all sunshineAin't nobody want youAin't nobody want me tooIf hell is above youYou're even lower than I do'
Lyrics: Genius
Armed with an impeccably smooth string arrangement and gentle rhythm guitars - and Angel Olsen's wonderful backing vocals during the chorus - McCombs creates a deceptively soothing atmosphere while warning that 'Mine is in a busted house/ Rain inside when it's sunny out/ Outside in/ Inside out' and proclaiming that 'The opposite of white/ Isn't white but rainbow blood'. There are other ominous features of McCombs 'opposite house': it's too narrow and made of endangered wood and his pet snakes fill the space wall to wall - coiling where the mice crawl'.
It all seems to amount to an extended literary conceit where a house stands in for the author's mind or psyche (which appears to be plagued by relationship issues), packaged in a lulling sonic package - which Sam Sodomsky aptly describes as "a specific style of low-key, dusky mood music suited for long, gray weekends spent indoors with the blinds closed [...] an eerily calm, soft rock atmosphere that masks the surrealist nightmare in the lyrics".
