|
|
|
Cake
Take off your goddamn hat Mr. McCrea
|
|
|
Cake
Take off your goddamn hat Mr. McCrea
Here are a bunch of albums you can't tell apart:
Motorcade of Generosity (1994)
Pressure Chief Extra Value (2004)
With
a couple of top 40 hits and a huge cult following, Cake may be one of the most
important bands still in their stride today. It's might have something to
do with the fact that it's incredibly hard to dislike the band - their songs are
catchy, the instrumentation is good, the tunes are well-written, and so on.
Cake’s sound as a whole is just a general atmosphere of rock/pop,
although it occasionally drifts into weird directions at times.
The defining element is Vince di Fiore’s trumpet which is as
much a trademark of the band as John McCrea’s dry, sarcastic lyrics (and the
dry, sarcastic way he ‘sings’ them).
Well, that and a bit of synthesizer (especially on later albums).
What really defines Cake for me, however, is really just how solid of a songwriter McCrea is. The songs are instantly catchy and usually have you singing along on the second or third listen. And the thing is, I don’t think that’ll ever change – the band’s been around for ten years now and they haven’t changed their sound much at all. The changes are generally subtle and hard to notice; in fact, even the most experienced reviewer couldn’t mix all their songs together and attempt to group them even into “earlier” or “later” categories with noteworthy success. As consistent as the sound is, the quality is even more so; I really don’t think that Cake is capable of putting out a truly great record any more than they are capable of making a bad one. Therefore, each release is probably gonna get around the same rating.
Cake’s
original lineup was:
Greg
Brown – Guitar, Organ
Victor
Damiani – Bass
Vincent
di Fiore – Trumpet, Backing Vocals
John
McCrea – Guitar, Vocals
Todd
Roper – Drums, Backing Vocals
Motorcade of Generosity (1994) 
Best Song: You Part the Waters
I suppose, then, if I were to rank them in terms of “better” and
“worse”, this would definitely fall into the “better” category, as this
is a really strong set of songs. Cake
was more of a fun band at this point, doing easy singalongs with
danceable rhythms and all-around good musicianship.
That much should be apparent from the get-go, with opener “Comanche”
which sounds almost like a waltz (as does “Up So Close”).
Yes, the fun-ness is sprinkled all over this album, from the bouncy
singalong “Pentagram” to the funk/jazz of the excellent “You Part the
Waters”. Not that they can’t
rock once in a while, as is the case in “Jolene” where McCrea gives the most
exciting vocal performance on the album, no matter how unnecessary it sounds
hearing him yell “GET DOWN!” at the top of his lungs.
Either way, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a bad selection here. If I were to pick a worst, it would actually probably be the
single “Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle” just because the riff sounds so familiar.
The lyrics more than make up for it, though; the dry wit in McCrea’s
lyrics come out here more than anywhere else. Yet I know there are people who
will claim Cake as being a sarcastic band without even hearing this song.
For the record, the full title is actually “How Can You Afford Your
Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle?” which gives a good idea of what the song’s about. It’s about a rebel who goes to concerts and lives a
rebellious life, yet he (or maybe she)'s still “drinking what they’re selling”. With lines like “your self-destruction doesn’t hurt
them/your chaos won’t convert them”, Cake forever doomed itself to be uncool,
but I doubt they really cared. Instead,
they just made songs like “Mr. Mastodon Farm”, a stick-out track for sure
due to the oddly structured lyrics. An
odd concept, this one – he talks about how birds fall from the window ledge
but unless he gets up to see them he’ll never know if they flew away before
hitting the ground. “It’s
almost as my life will fall unless I see their ascent”, cries out McCrea like
there’s a point to all this…artistic it is, and unfortunately not the sort
of song that Cake was too interested in doing for the future. Perhaps
there’s too many “heeey-yooo’s” in the end, but it gives way to my
personal favorite, closer “Ain’t No Good”.
Backed by a fairly monotonous trumpet line, this is probably the
catchiest song on the whole damn album just because of the “watch out!’s”
in the chorus.
My only complaint is that the whole CD sounds like a poorly ripped MP3 version…the songs are too quiet and you’ve got to adjust the volume when you put it on, and it sounds pretty underproduced as a whole, but then again, it just sounds like a band having a good time in the studio.
Best Song: Frank Sinatra
This is one of those albums I keep coming
back to. I’ll listen to it once
after several months and think, “wow, this is great, what have I been
missing?” And then listen to it
again and realize I was sick of all these songs.
Of course, I’ve had this one for a long time, and so should you.
It’s probably their best seller (although I’ve heard that it was
actually Comfort Eagle). This
is because this time there’s a hit on the record, a quasi-rap/rock song called
“The Distance”. It’s about
horse racing…car racing…who knows really, there’s references to both.
This is really the heaviest Cake album, which isn’t saying much except
that they actually attempt to do quite a bit of rocking out which they don’t
do much. This is found on the
half-title track, “Nugget”, featuring one of the best choruses known to man,
the all-encompassing “shut the fuck up”.
Probably a reason they got a parental advisory for this one.
Even though this contains some of their best songs, from the extremely well-written opener “Frank Sinatra” (which is, in retrospect, one of McCrea’s greatest accomplishments), to the funky jam sessions that show Cake is really on top of the game (“Italian Leather Sofa”), it also contains some of their most redundant, from the unnecessary “Race Car Ya-Yas” to the song that proved even Cake couldn’t make country worth listening to (at least not for two more years), “She’ll Come Back To Me”. The album also contains three cover songs. “I Will Survive” is certainly the strangest (I believe this was actually a minor hit for the band), as the boys take the Gloria Gaynor disco smash and transform it into a (more or less) standard rock song. Of course it needed some more rough edges, which would explain the change from “stupid” to “fucking” as well as Greg Brown laying down the heavy guitar in the end. To counterbalance, there’s a version of Willie Nelson’s “Sad Songs and Waltzes” that’s pretty true to the original, and a song called “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps”, which is a…Spanish song originally I believe. Not a lot of people know this is a cover since it sounds a lot like the band’s other work, making it a good choice there.
So yeah, overall I don’t think it’s as good as Motorcade, but I do know a lot of people who’d say this is the best one. It contains a lot of the Cake classics that everyone should own, like "Frank Sinatra", "The Distance", "I Will Survive", "Italian Leather Sofa" and so on. This is probably a good an introduction as any, so if you're interested in the band, start here.
Anyways, the popularity of “The
Distance” really took the band by surprise as suddenly they were in the
spotlight. This actually caused a
lot of tension in the band, because even though Greg Brown wrote the song (the
only Cake song he’s ever written), John was getting all the credit.
Eventually he quit, bringing along bassist Victor Damiani, to form a new
band called Deathray. I own all of their releases (which really isn’t hard if
you’ve got like…20 bucks) and will review them sometime in the near future.
So Cake gets a new bassist, and off we go!
Cake
is now:
Vincent
di Fiore: Trumpet, Backing Vocals
John
McCrea: Guitar, Vocals, Organ
Gabriel
Nelson: Bass, Guitar, Piano
Todd Roper: Drums, Backing Vocals
Best Song: Satan is my Motor
So Cake loses two members and manages to sound exactly the
same as they did when they were still in the band.
Well…I guess John is taking more creative control and as a result some
of the rough edges of Fashion Nugget are gone.
You won’t find any “shut the fuck up” choruses here, but you’ll
still get a free parental advisory sticker. Funny
because my copy doesn’t contain any obscenities whatsoever.
There’s
still some good rock n' roll spirit left in the band, like the opener “Satan is my Motor”,
which just might be one of my favorite Cake songs just because of how perfectly
written it seems to be. This,
alongside other songs of the same vein, stuff like “Hem of Your Garment”,
“You Turn the Screws”, “Let Me Go”, and “Sheep Go To Heaven”, prove
that Cake can still spin out an infectiously catchy song whenever they want to. I guess you could also include the first single “Never
There”, which is a good song in it’s own right, but really I’m sick
of it by now - it was sort of the top 40 hit that never really made it into the
hearts of the listeners. “Sheep Go To
Heaven” was the bigger hit here, and it’s easy to see why…it harkens back
to the singalong days of Motorcade, yet this time the band shows real
skill by including one of the best bridges you’ll ever find in a rock song.
Complete with air raid sirens even!
Just one of the stranger things you’ll find on this album.
That and a whole load of synthesizer on “Cool Blue Reason” which
really seems to ruin the song. It’s
like making you’re grilling a steak and you salt the thing until it shrivels up
and dies. It’s just too much salt!
Or if you’re grilling a steak and drench it in synthesizers, which
probably wouldn't taste very good either. But here's the thing, Cake loves
the synthesizer from here on out, no matter how dated and silly they start to
sound after a while
The remaining songs are all pretty good but wholly unremarkable. Except maybe “Mexico”, which proves that they really could do a good country ballad. So why do you suppose country stations won’t play it? I don’t know, have you checked?
A quick side note: my copy of this CD is different than the first one I bought (before I listened to it so much that it went on strike and refused to play anymore) – “You Turn the Screws” is produced differently (the piano intro is chopped up), the bridge to “Sheep Go To Heaven” gets destroyed entirely and the song fades out instead of ending, and “Hem of Your Garment” is totally different, using maracas of all things. I don’t think it’s rare, but I don’t think that this is a revised version, because not only do the songs in question sound unfinished, but none of the changes are for the better. Joe Cohen (resident teddy bear and devoted reader of New Traditionalists) suggests that the edit of “Sheep” is the video edit, furthering the idea that this was actually released later than the original. Why they did this is still a mystery to me.
Sometime in between this album and Comfort Eagle, session guitarist Xan McCurdy signed on as a full-time band member.
Best Song: Comfort Eagle
John decides to refine the songwriting process a little and
as a result we get the first Cake album devoid of filler since Motorcade,
except the songs are even stronger than before.
Once again, Cake produces a couple of hits, including the smash “Short
Skirt/Long Jacket”. I do like the
song quite a bit, and I think it was a good (if not overly cautious) choice for
first single. Hell,
if I were to describe
the Cake sound as a whole I’d probably just say “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”
because all the elements of Cake are in there - it's catchy, there's trumpet,
and the lyrics are just slightly off-base. While other rock bands are
singing about the girl who loves to party, who's different than all the rest,
the girl in this song is nothing short of ordinary.
Other
great stuff includes the title track which is phenomenal. Not only do they rock out a bit (which they’ve not done
this much since Fashion Nugget), but McCrea actually creates the
atmosphere the song describes in an almost chant-like fashion. It’s about a revolution (“we are building a religion,
we’re building it bigger”) that’s supportive (“we’re behind you,
we’re behind you, and let us please remind you, we can find a car to find you
if you ever lose your way”), yet inescapable (“resistance is useless, it is
useless to resist it). Of course
there’s dark economic undertones afoot (“you’d better come with cash”), and
that’s what makes it the best song on the album, musically and lyrically.
Besides that, there’s also plenty of catchy numbers such as “Opera Singer” and “Long Line of Cars”, the former showing right off the bat that no one gives a shit about drummer Todd Roper. And even though the synths in the beginning made me cringe a little the first time, this really is quite a solid piece, particularly with the horns blaring in the chorus. The thing I like about this album is that it’s got a little more replay value than the others – not only is there no filler but the songs are also quite deep and layered. Some of them will even grow on you after a while, like the ol’ fashioned 70’s rock of “Meanwhile Rick James…” and the synth-powered “Commissioning a Symphony in C”. Even the minute-and-a-half instrumental “Arco Arena” (which McCrea described as his idea of what “viking rock” would sound like) is an important part to the album. Being a viking myself, I approve of this song. The album does end on a slightly weak note (“World of Two” doesn’t quite have the oomph of previous closer “Where Would I Be”). Despite that, if you were to ask me what the best Cake album is, I’d say this one takes the proverbial cake.
Hey! Todd Roper quit the band after this. Can you guess what band he joined? That’s right, he’s now in Deathray too.
Best Song: Carbon Monoxide
After three long years, Cake finally puts out another album. This one’s totally self-produced, which might explain the
wait (then again, it took Comfort Eagle this long to come out as well).
Really, I don’t think anyone should be surprised by this album,
considering it has the same sound as the previous four, only more synthesizer
this time around, which works with mixed results.
It’s
certainly more of a grower than the other albums; the songs are just as well
written as always, but it’s very shaky at first listen.
Cake scores a few instant classics like the 60’s scuba-dance “Carbon
Monoxide” (shoe-in for the second single after the predictable “No
Phone”), featuring my favorite lyric of the album, “car after bus after car
after truck after this my lungs will be so fucked up”.
“Tougher Than It Is”, with it's amazing bass line, scores major points for being the best closer
since “Ain’t No Good”, maybe even topping it.
The album’s more somber and less festive as a whole – only three or four songs retain the playfulness of Motorcade, showing Cake taking themselves more seriously with each passing album. Not that the somber stuff isn’t good…”She’ll Hang the Baskets” is a great little tune, featuring my favorite riff on the whole album. They even do a cover of Bread’s “Guitar Man” that shows Cake still has a good ear for cover songs - while it still sounds like the song's a bit dated, it's a great piece for the middle of the album.
So
anyways, it’s hard to imagine being too disappointed in this album, seeing as
all the deviations are slight. In
fact, I’ve even heard fans complain that they’re not changing enough, which
is strange because artists changing their sounds usually prompts tons of
complaints from just about everyone. The
only real difference is that songs like “Waiting” and “Dime” that employ
lots of synthesizers, almost as though they’re trying to get them to be as
much a trademark of their sound as the obligatory trumpet break.
Also, it seems as though John McCrea is finally singing rather than just
enunciating his vocals. The “why
you say you are not in love with me” in “Wheels” really threw me for a
loop at first. He even sings the entirety of “Guitar Man”, as well as at
least the choruses for most of the songs.
I’m sure many fans will be quick to run this off as their
weakest album, and while it’s not one of the stronger ones, it still doesn’t
disappoint.
Pressure
Chief Extra Value (2004)
If you were one of the few people who ordered your copy of Pressure Chief on some website (I think it might have been Sony's), you would receive this little 3-track bonus disc as a bonus. It contains three songs, two of them covers. "Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town" is the better of the who, both notable because once again McCrea is actually singing, especially in the second one, "Strangers in the Night". There's another instrumental to close it, called "Conroy". It's actually a little reminiscent of "Arco Arena", except, wouldn't you believe it, this one is even more modernized, being built on a synth line that should be played by bass and littered with little bleeps all throughout. Still, it's a decent song and should have been on Pressure Chief from the beginning.
Links:
The Cakeography is probably the best website on Cake
But you might want to check out their official page
