Cass McCombs’s "County Line" plays like a melancholy reflection on his home town—and maybe it is. But in his self-directed video for the song, he acts as both chronicler and interloper, crossing other people's county and border lines into places that conventional perception would have you believe are plagued by poverty and despair (Mexican border towns, New Orleans), filming moments of joy and celebration, which he's slowed to match the tempo of his croon. The result? A sort of universal mediation on what it means to be from some place—that strangely familiar alienation.
