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 Gomez Walker’s voice and guitar. On the drive north on the freeway to Chicago from Gomez Walker’s hometown, the sign just before the Illinois border reads, in part, “Last Missouri Exit.” It is a point on the map, and, for her, a point of no return. Last Missouri Exit is a coming-of-age album, that’s because its concerns are growth and perspective, and it was made by a band already living beyond the horizon the album is named for. It is an album that longs to be listened to while one watches the sun set from their porch swing, but its wistful, idyllic take on the Midwest isn’t nostalgia for the past—it’s what Case Oats conjured in the basement one summer on an ad-hoc rig, a document of a band that grew together around these songs at a newfound peak of their collaborative powers. What they’ve made is warm and inviting, an album that reveals itself on first spin and grows deeper with each listen. This is their introduction; one wonders at what else their horizon holds.