Singer-songwriter Cass McCombs kicks off his world tour at Henry Miller Library.

Cass McCombs’ 2016 record Mangy Love brings on razor-sharp cynicism. The opener “Bum, Bum, Bum,” a jab to the groin of the American justice system, bites with an unapologetic potency that recalls Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane.”

“They say, ‘Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own’/ So they employed men far away to turn against their home,” McCombs croons alongside an upbeat, unhurried melody.

“Blood in the streets, our eternal river/ I know the killer, he counts my silver. You think you’ve heard it all before, well, here’s once more/ We’re all at war.”

He calls it a commentary on the country’s incessant sequence of police violence against unarmed individuals who most likely fit in on the lower spots of the socioeconomic totem pole.

“There are so many voices in our society seldom heard due to discrimination,” McCombs says. “There’s a point where we all see it and we need to talk about it.”

Through a funk-driven rhythm intertwined in traces of roots reggae, McCombs addresses female inequality in “Run Sister Run”: “Do male justices piss in a squat? Our sister lives in a squat that pisses on justice/ Justice is blind and a woman to boot, these boots are made for marching and that’s justice too.”

McCombs’ shades of frustration have fueled his music since he started out. The approach has earned McCombs some quiet acclaim over the years – in 2009, Catacombs was voted onto Pitchfork’s “50 Top Albums of the Year” and the California native has toured with Arcade Fire, Band of Horses and Thurston Moore and the Meat Puppets.

As an outsider voice for the marginalized, McCombs’ anti-establishment, indie rock roots extend back to 2003, when he first launched his website without any mention of his name or his music.

“We were very punk,” McCombs explains. “We wanted to destroy the music business – we didn’t want to have any promotional activity whatsoever. Everything was to be subversive.”

McCombs describes the earliest iteration of his website as more of a gallery occupied by visual art.

“It was an open forum for people to send in controversial content, and we promised to post it,” he says. “I don’t know how many people saw it, but the intent was to undermine the capitalistic nature of the music business.”

The longtime side project of Little Wings’ Kyle Field, Be Gulls, opens with their mellow brand of folk and lyrical stream-of-consciousness.

CASS MCCOMBS and BE GULLS 7pm Tuesday, Sept. 13. Henry Miller Library, 48603 Highway 1, Big Sur. $30. www.folkyeah.com