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In the war of changing societal norms, much of what we understand about masculinity – the historical, the sociological, and the anecdotal – can seem like a battle line. Some fight for the right to keep the status quo alive, others take up arms for the chance to set a new course for contemporary and future men. Yet on Ideal Man, the latest release by singer-songwriter Andrew Combs, listeners are treated to a rich examination of an artist who understands the shades of grey that make up modern masculinity.
On Stars Of Longing, the album opener and debut single from the LP, Combs delivers his most upfront questioning of life-to-date:
“I often wonder, if the hunger, is just to find what I was put here for.”
Later within the song, between rumination on religion or his place in the universe, the Nashville-based artist sends up a resounding chorus:
“Whichever way that the wild winds blow, all I’ve learned is all I know, it’s only love.”
Tracking at just over three minutes, between an edgy, cosmic guitar riff and haunting vocal overlays in the verses and choruses, Combs re-iterates the mantra “love” twenty-one times. Much like the Beatles’ masterpiece “All You Need Is Love,” in which the word love appears over one hundred times, Combs joins a noble list of male artists who willingly embrace the concept that, as an ideal, every experience in life can be summed up or experienced through the lens of love.
One may think that, by design, a musician would be more capable of using his inner wellspring of emotion as a source of inspiration rather than an Achilles heel. Still, whether or not it is easier for artists to embrace the panoply of feelings that every human, male or female, is subject to, research shows that men are generally less amenable to putting their feelings on display, even perhaps at an early age.
Very much a man in the midst of a changing gender climate, Andrew Combs’s lyricism is unabashedly tuned in to the vulnerability – the vulnerability of intimacy, of fatherhood, of mortality – that most men may shy away from.
Since his last LP, the Dallas-cum-Nashville crooner has experienced major life changes like fatherhood and marriage. And where the responsibilities of family life can curtail an artist’s development, Combs leans into his newfound role to produce some of the most beautiful arrangements on the subject of manhood as a family man.
On the songs Like a Feather and Hide and Seek the singer lets his perspectives on being in love shine through luscious harmonies and heart-on-sleeve lyrics. In previous outings on his earlier albums, such as the troubadour jam Rose Colored Blues, Combs detailed the challenge of life on the open road, singing how the musical journeyman may “charm a pretty face to keep him warm but come the morning, on his way.”
One of the hardest aspects of spending one’s professional life in a constant state of travel is that, by and large, the desire for intimacy travels with you.
Here, Combs acknowledges that loneliness in the male artist’s life can drive any musician into the arms of a sympathetic partner, but that there are limitations to the “rambling, rose-colored blues.”
Across the landscape of popular music, men have been endless advocates for the allure of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Yet, the road from Canyons of My Mind, where Rose Colored Blues is featured, to An Ideal Man has brought a new reality, a new stretch of highway, into the singer’s sights. On the aforementioned Hide and Seek Combs surrenders to true love with clarity and emotional intelligence that belies his youth. Love, as Combs understands, is a “game,” and “not a fool or trying to play the part,” the singer puts his heart on the line for acceptance or for heartbreak.
Not too long ago, on his second LP, All These Dreams, Combs sung of Strange Birds, a bird being British slang for the female sex, and how among the cornucopia of birds perched on their wires, there was one “waiting on the wire for me.” Not more than four years later, he has gained a bird and chick all the same. With the arrival of his little girl, the singer’s canvas for exploring the dynamics of love has been magnified. On Golden, the Ideal Man album closer, Combs eases into the role of philosopher and father, noting that the “leaves fall all around her, ”the “trees tower above her,” and in the dichotomy of life and death, his vantage point of his child is “forever golden.”
The challenges of modern fatherhood are perhaps too numerous to expand upon in a meditation on an album. Not only are the pressures of establishing a career or stable home life ever-increasing, but also the role of male as provider and protector still enjoy a healthy influence in the social imagination. In a pop landscape that celebrates the superficial and often reductive sides of masculinity, it is refreshing to see established artists like Combs champion the time-tested role of fatherhood on a major album release.
Across a number of the album’s most exquisite tracks, it is clear that the singer-songwriter has turned into his most vulnerable sides and how these are a strength of his character. Moreover, Combs’s understanding of human frailty sees him willing to dive, lyrically speaking, into the weightier waters of life. The question – who am I? – perhaps forms the basis of most internal dialogues that have ever wandered through the human mind. Even more for men, studies show that a lack of understanding of one’s true identity can lead to severe psychological consequences.
Yet with poetic lyricism, Combs tackles purpose, or the potential randomness of it, on a number of the album’s more complex tracks. On the eponymous track, the burden of patiently waiting for life to reveal the singer’s purpose takes center stage. Envying the “drunken poet,” hungering to “be the hunter, or coveting “the coyote,” Combs’s lyrics on Ideal Man aptly examine the seemingly immutable nature of certain living beings. Hunters hunt, poets exercise their wrath on pages, and coyotes search for prey. But Combs, like many of us men who live in the modern world, wishes that his purpose could be wrapped up in such a simple equation.
In certain ways, the song Ideal Man is a perfect bookend to one of the album’s later numbers, Born Without A Clue. Though in his early thirties, Combs’s life experience is steeped in a wisdom that most may seek to avoid. “Born without a clue, we were born just for something to do,” the singer confronts the realistic prospect of the purposelessness of existence.
Perhaps the most striking lyrics for someone like me, who spends most of my time traveling and absorbing new experiences, it is hard to deny that many men seek to avoid the hard reality of our transitory nature, seeking out the comfort of socially conditioned experiences. In a world where we are just living for something to do, many men sit and toil in the quagmire of such conditioning, living in ways that satisfy external pressures, working to tick off all the appropriate boxes, and ignoring the inexorable fate that is written in the stars for all men. In this highly accomplished outing by Andrew Combs, it is refreshing to hear in song the complexities and contradictions of a man, just like you and me, wading through the sometimes murky, and sometimes clear waters of life, doing his damnedest to be an ideal man.
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Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
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Photo courtesy iStock.
