A second day in a row with a
workout! A second day in a row with a CD
review! How shall we celebrate such an outpouring
of good experiences? Let’s go with cake.
Disc 431 is…Pressure Chief
Artist: Cake
Year of Release: 2004
What’s up with the Cover? Cake likes their covers very simple. Here we have a symbolic hand shake,
presumably between two ‘pressure chiefs’ – which I assume to be world leaders. At least they’re shaking hands and not fists.
How I Came To Know It: Sheila originally
introduced me to Cake back in the late nineties, and this particular album is
just me drilling through the collection.
How It Stacks Up: We now have seven Cake albums, and I like all of
them. That said, Pressure Chief is on
the lower end. I’ll rank it 5th
out of 7, just behind “Prolonging the Magic” reviewed way back at Disc 101.
Rating: 3 stars
“Pressure Chief” is Cake’s fifth
studio album, and by this point they’ve got their sound pretty well
mastered. California pop, insightful
indie lyrics, funk guitar, a horn section and just a slight air of country. They don’t mess with this formula and why should
they? It works, and “Pressure Chief” has
more than a few gems to offer.
The album opens with “Wheels” which combines the lilting rise
and fall of a folk song with funk guitar and horn sections. When I hear Cake mash up styles like this, I
never question why they did it, but I always wonder why someone didn’t do it
sooner. Maybe someone did, but just not
to the same degree of mastery.
The melody of “Wheels” is a long, deliberate rise and
fall that lends itself to intricate lyrics and word play. A song about travel and the strange
disconnect when we’re on the road. My
favourite section goes:
“In a seedy karaoke bar
By the banks of the mighty Bosphorus
Is a Japanese man in a business suit singing 'Smoke Gets in
Your Eyes'
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French
Canadians
While the overweight Americans wear their patriotic
jumpsuits.”
Ah, the mixed bag of cultures found
at any tourist attraction. This section makes
me want to book a flight and go sing karaoke in Istanbul. Mind you, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” is not my song – I’m more of a “Summer Wind” or “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” kind of guy. I’ll even tackle “When Doves Cry” once I’m good and warmed up. But I digress.
Back to the album. Equally entertaining, but less light-hearted
is “Take It All Away” a nasty break
up song that really captures the angry exchange on the sidewalk as one person
is moved/kicked out of the house by the other.
The song’s groove has a menacing finality to it, but strangely it still
makes you want to dance as our narrator sings:
“Take your economy car and your suitcase
Take your psycho little dogs
Take it all away”
These lines speak to a long period
of frustration finally boiling over, and with just three specifics, let our
minds fill in the rest of the picture. I
see a pink-ribbon wearing diva standing on the sidewalk in a large hat, designer
sunglasses and impractical heels waiting for a cab to come, her Shiatsus jumping
and barking at the passing traffic. You
can paint a lot with only a few brush strokes, if you pick the right strokes.
That goes for Cake’s production
choices as well, which always leave a lot of empty space for the intricate
layers of sound to spread into. There
are a lot of instruments going on in most of these songs, but the instruments
serve the melody, rather than distract from it.
They know how to be sparse with the layering, and never noodle. None of the songs even come in over four
minutes, and they mostly leave you wanting more in a good way.
There are places that the band
gets a bit too obsessed with the simple.
Songs like “Dime” that follow
the life of a forgotten dime in a street, or under an overpass (Cake is big on
freeway imagery) or “No Phone” which
is supposed to be a serious song about the need to get away from it all, but
really is about leaving your cell phone at home, come off as cutesy. Maybe it’s just that I value ten cents a lot
more than a mobile phone and the idea of leaving the latter at home seems like
a default position, rather than some grand expression of weariness.
“Pressure Chief” is Cake’s fourth
consecutive album with a song about cars or driving. They are usually quite negative on the whole
driving experience, and “Carbon Monoxide”
is no exception, focusing on what it’s like to be a pedestrian trapped in a car
culture. It’s also one of the best
driving songs on the record. Irony, you are a harsh mistress.
The song that stood out for me on this
listen though, was “End of the Movie.” This is a very stripped down track, mostly
just a guitar, some kind of hand-held drum and lead singer John McRea reminding
us that despite all of life’s twists and turns, there’s something in us that
makes us want to carry on and see it through to the end.
“People you love
Will turn their backs on you
You'll lose your hair
Your teeth
Your knife will fall out of its sheath
But you still don't like to leave before the end of the
movie”
It’s dark, but it’s also uplifting
in a strange way. After all, the album
ends with “Tougher than it is,” a
song about the need to relax and not create unnecessary drama in your
life. That song is a bit clunky and too
sing-songy, but it sets the mood nicely for “End
of the Movie”. Age, heartache and
disappointment may be ahead, but there’s a glory in getting through the
challenges. At least that’s what I take
from it. It’s kind of like seeing this
crazy CD Odyssey through to the end, only a lot more important. At least I hope so.
Best tracks: Wheels, Take It All Away, Carbon Monoxide, The
Guitar Man, End of the Movie
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