Cass McCombs – Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 13/01/14

Cass McCombs rarely bothers to reconcile the polarities of his sound. In 2011, he split himself in half, releasing two albums as different as they were excellent: one alive with pulse, the other a collection of gallows-bothering lullabies. Last year’s Big Wheel And Others didn’t bother to blend his moods even slightly: juxtaposing his gentlest work with his most boisterous textures in a sprawling, unwieldy opus. Tonight, however, Cass McCombs demonstrates a focused dedication to rock music – engineering the set to showcase the best of his full band interplay, and gorgeously extended jams.

McCombs’ opening number “Big Wheel” laid the cards on the table. Tonight is not a performance of nomadic acoustica. McCombs came to make his six-string roar. It’s surprising – considering his reluctance to put himself in the media spotlight – how cocksure McCombs is right from the beginning of the set: hips locked into a jaunty lean, both hands wrapped around the microphone. He’s no begrudging performer tonight. At almost every opportunity, McCombs relishes leading the band through ascending textures and thickening grooves – adding dashes of unprecedented noise around the margins.

Material from the slow crawling Wit’s End is notable for its absence here – only the single “County Line” getting an isolated airing in the encore. The material wouldn’t suit McCombs’ mood tonight, awkwardly jarring against the straight up rock in a way which didn’t seem to bother him on his last album, but something which he wisely steers away from this evening. Tonight is first and foremost a rock show – and at no point does McCombs lose sight of that, even in his gentlest moments.

McCombs does still make a friend of sparseness from time to time, and he wears it as handsomely as ever. He knows a good time to ease off the throttle when he sees one, and it would take a brave performer to fuss around with the beautiful delicacy of material like “Dreams Come True Girl”. Nonetheless, even these moments retain the rock-band spirit of full interplay between the musicians, easing into modest, but intricate, improvisations. With the rhythm section locked on a groove and the second guitarist fingering the repeated guitar lick, McCombs is free to follow his fancy – making the electric roar, or the nylon strings sing, as each song demands.

As might be expected, McCombs’ richly drawn lyricism is slightly lost in the mix tonight. Considering his faintly wooden vocal delivery, it’d be easy to suspect that tonight’s hour and half set could become hard work by its tail end without his trademark poetics. But the show is more than saved by McCombs’ surprisingly fierce performance instinct tonight. Little moments like the smash-cut build and release on “Love Thyne Enemy” and “The Same Thing” demonstrate a capacity to straight-up crowd please from a man often suspected of self seriousness.

The really excellent thing is that these thrills aren’t cheap payoffs. They’re packaged in the loose-yet-tight musicianship for which McCombs is known. Tonight’s set moves through the pulse of rock music, but preserves his music’s smart sense of space. It’s a balance he’s rarely even attempted to blend on record, but tonight’s set is a masterwork in reconciling his various musical identities into a coherent, live performance.