CASE OATS | LAST MISSOURI EXIT (SOFTPACK)

Last Missouri Exit, the debut album by Case Oats, is a remarkably assured record. The band-Spencer Tweedy (drums), Max Subar (guitar, pedal steel), Jason Ashworth (bass), Scott Daniel (fiddle), and Nolan Chin (piano, organ)-gelling around Casey Gomez Walker's voice and guitar. Last Missouri Exit is a collection of sharply drawn character studies, Gomez Walker's background in creative writing expressing itself in wry observation and a disarmingly easy sense of the lyric, the profound and profane tumbling out of songs like "Bitter Root Lake" with the weight of a confessional poem and the ease of a conversation between friends.