Watch Cass McCombs’s Visually Impressive “Big Wheel” Video

On Monday, Cass McCombs premiered the video for “Big Wheel” off his most recent album Big Wheel and Others, released last October.

Shot in New York, China and McCombs’ native California, the artist’s friend and collaborator Albert Herter created a visual adjunct to the album’s opening track with a kaleidoscopic palette of images to match the song’s hypnotic, languidly intense jam.

Like the rest of the 22-track album, “Big Wheel” is a hybrid of high truths and lowly pleasures. It’s both staunchly American and otherworldly, depicting the Western decree of masculinity so understatedly that it could be (mis)interpreted either way as earnestness or gentle and amused irony.

Something of a visual interpreter of McCombs’ work, Herter illustrated the cover of Big Wheel and Others as well as the covers of McCombs’ 2011 releases Humor Risk and WIT’S END.

“It’s a collection of psychically charged images which I had constructed over two years – very little found footage, mostly shot myself – randomly juxtaposed with each other and with text selected by chance from one of the other songs on the album,” Herter said.

“Sort of a propaganda film signifying nothing – or China, Animal, Pain, Myth, Water etc. etc. Everyone knows everything today – it’s very hard to produce something without meaning.”