Comfort Eagle
And as if my oracle self was looking down
on the world and saying “you sure are a bunch of pasty mutherfuckers”
I called the whole Cake/tv show synergy. “Short Skirt / Long
Jacket" (which by the way is above and beyond the best
song on this album) has been tapped as the theme song (albeit
the instrumental version) for the NBC show, Chuck.
Honestly, with the exception of SS/LJ, this album feels a bit
sluggish compared with their previous efforts. Like these guys
are trying to grow up or something. The nerve! What this ultimately
means is a more boring, less in your face album that’s more
somber and certainly more sober. It just feels like a band veering
off in another direction, a direction that we don’t want our
goofball bands to veer off into. |
Fashion Nugget
Cake is kind of the nerd's alt band. The
Jeremy Piven-looking lead singer sports a stupid fisherman's
hat and plays some instrument that sounds like a rattlesnake
while his buddies were probably playing their trumpets in the
high school marching band. Nerds or not, these guys make catchy,
white-guy frat funk that is certain to please any party crowd
out there. The standout track "The Distance" features mariachi-style
trumpets and a hook-laden bass line, and is one of those songs
that just makes you smile. The cover of "I Will Survive" is
one of the only disco songs I can listen to without puking,
and even interjects the "f" word in the line "I'm gonna change
those fuckin' locks..." While this is by no means a complex
or mature album, it serves its purpose to entertain and give
the Ween fans something else to listen to for a week or two. |
Motorcade of Generosity
Cake has always been a hard case to make.
Are they a novelty band, or is their fun brand of jokey, genre-laden
music legit indie pop? This, their first album, is clearly a
band having a balls-out good time. Probably enjoyed by an A&R
dude in a Hawaiian shirt and sombrero with a margarita swaying
drunkenly at a half-empty bar, he thought "now here's a band
that people will love to love." I mean in 1994 everyone was
sick of the heavy and wanted some horn-infused good times (that
wasn't ska, a la Mighty
Mighty Bosstones). This album was more all over the places,
and less formed than their follow-up, Fashion Nugget, but that's
kind of what debut albums are for. Best enjoyed drunk in the
background of a frat party. |
Prolonging the Magic
By the time this, their third album, rolled
around, Cake had established a sound that was genuinely theirs.
You have the vibraslap, the mix in of South American percussion
and lead singer, John McCrea's vaguely frat boy-at-a-karaoke-bar
earnestness. They do sprinkle in some new instrumentation on
this one beyond their typical horns with what sounds like a
singing saw, piano and some other flourishes. Again, you ask
yourself if there was sometime in this guy’s past where he thought,“Yeah,
I wanna be Dylan.” He writes smart, but ultimately goofy, songs.
Not goofy in the Presidents
of the United States of America kind of way, but full juvenile boy / girl relationship stuff that sounds an awful
lot like some mainstream romcom or relatively earnest hour long
filmed sitcom. If Friends was still on, they’d use a song from
this album as their theme song. The songs on this one aren’t
as immediately memorable, or as fun, but as an overall document,
it’s certainly sugary and sweet like few albums are or were. |
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