Heartmind is an eight-song album that feels like a journey among assorted tuneful feelings, somehow shaped to meet whatever it is a particular listener needs, to mirror whatever they bring to these uniformly incandescent and tragicomic tracks. Cass has set the stage, and allows the listener to pick the heroes and villains, the winners and losers, the jokes and the drags. He doesn’t want to present all the questions, let alone the answers.

Lead single, “Unproud Warrior,” is a necessary anthem for these times, where we all seem to have opinions about the critical news of the day without ever quite knowing what to do about it. Invoking Stephen Crane, S.E. Hinton, and fast-food restaurants, it is an allegory about our perception and ownership of responsibility, set to an elegant country & western ache.

Cass recorded these songs in multiple sessions on both coasts, in Brooklyn and Burbank, co-producing with Shahzad Ismaily, Buddy Ross, and Ariel Rechtshaid-now a dozen years into his collaboration with Cass beginning with 2009’s Catacombs. Rob Schnapf (who previously produced Cass’ ANTI- debut, Mangy Love) mixed and merged it all. The aforementioned Judd offers harmonies, while her beau Cactus Moser provides some lap steel. Other contributors include Joe Russo, Kassa Overall, Danielle Haim, The Chapin Sisters, Frank LoCrasto, and Nestor Gomez.