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.