Tag: Cass McCombs

The landtrain rumbled over something bumpy. Probably a hill, thought the conductor, as they made their way down the gently swaying aisle, digital holepuncher out, ready to process the ticket. The passenger, sole occupant of the car, sat oblivious, staring out the window at the landscape rushing twenty feet below, the faint sounds of some Slovakian cumbia leaking out of the expensive earbuds. “Ticket please?” The passenger startled, and reached for the sleek titanium briefcase, its embedded digital timer declaring to everyone that it held no ordinary cargo.

The first mate adjusted the sails, letting out some wind to keep both skids on the sand. The sun shone down like a hole punched in a blast furnace someone painted blue, the radio broadcasting its gypsy salsa above the hiss of the sandmaran's travel. Leaning on the tiller, the captain let out a yell of warning as they crested a dune, gaining air for a brief moment. They still didn’t have a plan for replacing the statue, but they had a thousand miles of desert to work something out.

The mechanic reached deep into the tool bag, knowing the required spanner would be at the very bottom. The clanking briefly drowned out the strains from the radio, its signal relayed every 500 meters by the commpods they had dropped on the way. Carefully fitting the business end of the tool between the rear set of treads on the boring machine, they found themselves exclaiming out loud “actually, I think it’s pretty interesting.” The surveyor, measuring the long tunnel behind them with an x-ray transit, looked back briefly, by now used to such outbursts. The cavern should be another two miles down.

I have never been so uncomfortable, thought the hacker as they strained to match the wires in the fusebox, their head inches from one of the combine’s many potentially lethal harvesting blades. The lookout’s shadow was barely visible against the hangar door. Straining to clip the blue wire into the scanner, they heard a soft call and nearly lost an ear before remembering their uncomfortable position.

Acoustic punk rock is always a dicey proposition, but The Future Kings of Nowhere and Shayne O’Neill rip through the genre like a blowtorch on toilet paper. Slick!