Get Dark With Cass McCombs’ ‘I’m a Shoe’ Video

The swing, pacing and the reverb-drenched guitars on "I'm a Shoe" scream out like a speeding car driving along vast stretches of desert in West Texas, with nothing for dozens of miles except you and a few cacti. The Rachael Pony Cassells-directed clip is culled from Cass McCombs' latest LP, Mangy Love, out now via ANTI-.

The song is inspired by the ghost town of Bodie, Calif., a casualty of WWII. The video title cards clarify further:

Creation, destruction, boom, ghost. In the song 'I'm a Shoe,' Cass references the California boomtown / ghost town of Bodie, a town that rose to peak population in the late 1800s gold rush. As people swarmed Bodie and scrambled to strike it rich, the town developed an unrivaled reputation for great violence, murder and a much feared figure — the 'Bad Man of Bodie.'

The video for 'I’m a Shoe' was filmed at the ghost town of Mare Island, Vallejo, California, which, in the chronology of California boomtown /ghost towns, directly follows the demise of Bodie. Bodie’s official end and Mare Island’s boom both came about to service the needs of World War II. The Roosevelt’s government’s War Production Board ordered the closure of Bodie’s gold mines in order to divert labor and equipment to the requirements of the war. Mare Island peaked at this time, employing over 40,000 people building warships and submarines; it now sits in ruins. It is a very compelling ghost town with a strange discomforting atmosphere. How will this next uncertain chapter of U.S. history unfold? What will be swarmed, extracted or built? What will be abandoned in the future for the vultures to inherit?

Check out the video above and stream McCombs' new LP below.