Cake
(Columbia)
\Stay the course"" seems to have been more or less Cake's unofficial modus operandi for the past decade. Ever since the 1994 release of Motorcade of Generosity on Capricorn, the band has consistently put out catchy songs born from the fusion of numerous styles including but not limited to jazz, funk, honky tonk and straightforward rock. John McCrea's sung/spoken lyrics have always made intelligent, cynical and scathingly sarcastic observations about pop culture, relationships, and the lives of artists. All of this punctuated with McCrea's more than infrequent use of the word ""Hey!"" Each successive album has made small changes to the formula, the heightened presence of keyboards and lessening of the honky tonk on Comfort Eagle being the most major, but Cake's sound has never undergone any huge reinvention. How then to explain the band's continued success in a constantly changing musical climate? Well for one, there aren't many other bands around that do what the trucker hat-wearing guys from Sacramento do. More important though is the fact that all of Cake's albums are good.
doesn't really do much to radically change the status quo. The guitars and bass still reflect their roots in funk and jazz. McCrea still delivers the kind of cynical observations that helped to launch ""Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle"" on alternative radio stations ten years ago. He's still lyrically preoccupied with the telephone and automobiles on ""No Phone"" and ""Take It All Away,"" respectively. Bread's ""The Guitar Man"" makes for the newest addition to Cake's list of recorded covers, a list that also includes the likes of Willie Nelson and Gloria Gaynor and continues to look more and more eclectic with each new entry.
Overall, hits the closest to Comfort Eagle's quirky pop. Once again the band's country influences are downplayed while more keyboards enter the mix. The unfortunate casualty of the album's instrumentation is Vincent Di Fiore's trumpet, which often provided many of the most compelling melodies on the band's earlier albums. The brass doesn't make many appearances on , and almost none of those go beyond background fills. However, when Cake subtracts with one hand they add with the other. The band makes good use of vocal harmonies on many of the songs and Fiore fills in for many of the melody lines that the trumpet would've taken on an older Cake album. Some new lyrical territory is also charted here as well. ""Carbon Monoxide"" marks McCrea's first stint as an environmentalist and ""End Of The Movie"" is as close to bittersweet as Cake has ventured since ""Mexico.""
This album's main shortcoming is its lack of any songs as instantly catchy as Comfort Eagle's ""Short Skirt/Long Jacket"" or ""Shadow Stabbing."" However, it's still a very decent effort and should live up to most fans' expectations. In short, if you like Cake's other albums then go buy this one. If you haven't been a fan in the past though, probably won't change your mind.
