Review: Andrew Combs Changes His Approach on Stripped-Down ‘Sundays’

Andrew Combs
Sundays
(Tone Tree)
3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Back to Mono, was Phil Spector’s one-time rallying cry. And while practically nothing connects the music of that legendary over-the-top ’60s producer with the introspective Americana singer/songwriter Andrew Combs, the latter musician decided to take Spector’s advice and record his fifth album in pure monaural audio.  

There are other changes Combs has adopted for this, his fifth album. 

Created after a mental breakdown during Christmas 2020, Combs along with producer Jordan Lehning fundamentally revised the artist’s songwriting approach. Instead of restoring the lusher, strummy qualities of his previous music, Combs strips down these songs to a basic four-piece, conspicuously highlighting Tyler Summers’ woodwinds. Using transcendental meditation practices as his writing guide, Combs recorded a song a week on Sunday (hence the album’s title) in a minimal but not spare style. 

A recent single had Combs covering Radiohead’s “High and Dry,” which indicates the vibe he’s chasing. There are moments of offbeat pop as on the elusive concepts in “Anna Please” where his voice is similar to that of Harry Nilsson; sweet, tentative yet with a lyrical bite emphasized by clarinet and other overdubbed horns providing wistful accompaniment. Elsewhere, on “Drivel to a Dream,” Combs creates music of another era, perhaps something that Van Dyke Parks or Brian Wilson would conjure in their more oblique forays. Echoes of Tim Buckley add to the mystery, bleak atmospherics, and unique slant.     

This falls on the fringes of art-folk but without the pretension that implies. The focus is on Combs’ high-pitched tenor voice, which remains up front and personal. Skeletal drums provide a supple, often ominous beat to songs that drift, float and hover as if in a reverie, urged on by those ever-present woodwinds that appear and dissolve with shadowy resolve. 

Combs describes the disc’s overall tone as that of a black and white film. Add foreign to that description (one song was inspired by an Ingmar Bergman flick) and you’re a few steps closer to this stirring, decidedly non-commercial music that sounds like little else.