CD Odyssey Disc 1725: Cheekface

Welcome to the weekend! Let’s get rolling with the first review of an album released in 2024.

If you’re thinking, “wouldn’t it be better if you reviewed albums that are more current more often” then you are not embracing the “pick the next record at random” concept at the heart of this journey we’re on.

Disc 1725 is…It’s Sorted

Artist: Cheekface

Year of Release: 2024

What’s up with the Cover?  A typical Cheekface album cover featuring quirky artwork with pastel colours. Here we have every home’s most beloved appliance, the coffee maker. I’m having a coffee right now, in fact, from a coffee maker not at all unlike the one depicted here.

This reminds me of the time I was staying in Florence and I was in the hotel café looking for a coffee when I stumbled into the back to see the proprietor brewing drip coffee. In Italy. We locked eyes. His filled with shame of guilty discovery. Mine with accusatory horror. Then the caffeine addiction regained control and I said, “I’ll have a coffee please.” No other words were exchanged.

As it happens, it was the only bad coffee I had my entire time in Italy, leading me to the conclusion that this man’s crimes were reassuringly rare.

But I digress…

How I Came To Know It: I’ve been a fan of Cheekface since I first heard their 2021 album, “Emphatically No”. This was me buying their latest. They don’t do CD releases, so I buy a download (which comes with the aforementioned album cover) and make my own. For my own use only, Cheekface!

How It Stacks Up: I have three Cheekface albums and I like them all relatively equally, but you aren’t reading this section for equivocation. I’ll put this one…second…for now. OK, yeah, there’s some equivocation but the reality is this the first review and like the first flight of skaters, the judge needs a little wiggle room.

Rating: 4 stars

Enjoy listening to Cake but wish they sounded more emotionally distant? Then you will like Cheekface, a band that takes Cake’s ironic detachment/catchy hook combo and ramps it up to 11, salting in a few dozen clever turns of phrase along the way.

This will not be for everyone. Like Cake’s John McCrea, Greg Katz has a flat half-spoken delivery to his singing style. However, also like McCrea, Katz’s phrasing is immaculate. Cheekface writes songs that are crisp and full of jump that sit down in the pocket in a way that would be unforgiving of any error in timing. Fortunately, this band is sharp as fuck. They never miss the beat and lay everything down from drum to guitar to (frequent) hand claps without ever hitting a snag.

The songs are very easy to groove to, but it helps if you enjoy clever lyrics as well. If so, no one turns a phrase that makes you both smile and think like Cheekface. The topics are often about the decay of Western culture, and while they sing in that detached kind of way, underneath their message is exhorting you to break out of suburban box-house thinking and, well, be weird.

“Popular 2” is a song about how we are all online, even to the point that neighbourhoods start to resemble reality TV with all the people with porch cams. Our narrator in the tune embraces (ironically, of course) the celebrity of it all:

“I just want to be popular to watch
In the movie you put on from the camera on your porch
Your across the street neighbor walks his dog on TV
The future is now, unfortunately
And if I'm never ever gonna be alone, here in my community neighborhood home
Then I wanna be popular to watch
In the movie you put on from the camera on your porch”

Reading those lyrics won’t do “Popular 2” justice, however. This song is funky as hell and a great listen. Also, Cheekface is one of those bands that are fun to sing along with. Partly because you don’t need a lot of vocal range to do so, and partly because once you know what comes next and can hit the timing, you can feel just as clever as Katz when you land the punchlines. Every massive pop song has this, but “It’s Sorted” has the experience on songs that are so weird they will never be huge pop songs. That doesn’t mean you can enjoy them the same way.

Sometimes “It’s Sorted” strays over the line from “super entertaining smart guy you met on the porch of a party” to “guy who is hard to relate to because everything is a meme”. The line is fuzzy and shifts a lot, but here’s an example of being over it from “There Were Changes in the Hardcore Scene”:

“I hate to send mixed messages
I love to send mixed messages”

Get it? Get it? Yes, Cheekface, we get it. Fortunately, the song is so good you forgive them their un-killed darlings.

Cheekface puts a Miracle Max style chocolate coating on their messages to make them go down easier, but underneath it all they have a punk sensibility, and are not averse to expressing frustration with society. “Don’t Stop Believing” is the most melodic song on the record, and also the darkest. It is better if you have the lyrics of the Journey song of the same name going on in the background of your head.

Like most Cheekface tunes, they’re better if you are thinking about them, thinking about something else at the same time, and drawing connections to a couple other things when the mood strikes. Don’t worry, the songs are catchy and this will not interfere with your ability to groove, dance, and sing along.

Best tracks: The Fringe, Popular 2, I Am Continuing to Do My Thing, Don’t Stop Believing, Plastic