CD Odyssey Disc 1044: Cake

Life has been hectic of late, and I’m a bit knackered as a result. I’m going to try to get this review written on what reserves of energy I’ve got left and then hit the sack.

Disc 1044 is…Comfort Eagle

Artist: Cake

Year of Release: 2001

What’s up with the Cover? Another typical Cake cover, consisting of a background the colour you paint all the rooms in your house right before you decide to sell it.

There is also a graphic of a lovely early sixties couple enjoying a cocktail. These two look smashed. I imagine that he’s about to confess that he lost the Jaguar in a late night card game and she’s working up the courage to tell him she’s been sleeping with the pool boy.

How I Came To Know It: I was already a Cake fan when this album came out so this was just me buying their latest release.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seven Cake albums, which at this point is all of them. Of the seven, “Comfort Eagle” is my favourite – so #1, baby!

Ratings: 4 stars

“Comfort Eagle” is one of those great albums that I played a bit too much when it came out. Despite all that overplay, I still enjoyed every minute of it when the Odyssey deemed it was time to return.

Cake is one of those bands that have created their own unique sound. They channel sixties lounge, seventies funk, eighties synth and a bit of modern indie detachment. The combination is a mix of heavy groove and catchy beats that gets your head bobbing and your toe tapping.

“Comfort Eagle” is the band’s fourth album and is more of the same formula, but with a bit more polish. The production values are superior, and the arrangements are inspired. These guys just seem to know when the bass should lay down a riff, when the horn section should fire a blast and when to calm it all down and let lead vocalist and writer John McCrea deliver a few lines with the perfect phrasing and timing of a beatnik poet.

Thematically the songs are a mix of idle observations and impressionistic character studies. The opening song, “Opera Singer” is the story of an opera singer; temperamental, difficult but brilliantly talented. On “Pretty Pink Ribbon” you get the sense of a spoiled girl, navigating through life on her looks. Neither character is particularly likable but they’re so well drawn you can’t help but want to know them better.

The album’s best song is also the band’s most famous. “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” is part character study and part wishlist of what the perfect girlfriend might be like. The song always reminds me of my own girl, particularly the line:

“I want a girl with a mind like a diamond

And eyes that burn like cigarettes.”

That latter part is only when I’ve said something stupid, of course.

The whole record has a rolling incessant energy that makes you want to be behind the wheel of a car, driving slightly too fast. On the surface, songs like “Comfort Eagle” make you want to get somewhere in a hurry, without overthinking about where exactly you’re going. Just drive. Yet for all this urgency and celebratory hand-clapping (which many of the songs feature) there is a subversive quality to the lyrics, exposing the emptiness of modern culture even as they showcase their allure with a catchy beat.

Songs like the title track make you want to sing along when the man in the music business calls you ‘dude!’ even as you also recognize he doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Also, for songs that are so good for driving, Cake once again delivers a solid anti-traffic song with “Long Line of Cars”. As the song admonishes, “This long line of cars…is all because of you.” If you’re wondering who caused the traffic jam take a look in the rearview mirror and see your reflection looking back at you.

Like a lot of great music, “Comfort Eagle” can be appreciated on multiple levels. You could just bob your head and enjoy the beat, or you could consider the deeper message Cake is delivering about the dangers of ego and self-absorption at both the personal and the societal level. It is best enjoyed when both experiences impact you at the same time.

I enjoy this album every time I put it on. I may have been guilty of playing it too much when I first bought it, but with music this good, it was a victimless crime.

Best tracks: Meanwhile Rick James…, Short Skirt/Long Jacket, Commissioning a Symphony in C, Comfort Eagle, Long Line of Cars, Love You Madly

CD Odyssey Disc 865: Cake

Another good day at work followed by a little socializing at the end of the day has left me feeling in a mellow mood.

Disc 865 is….B-Sides and Rarities

Artist: Cake

Year of Release: 2007

What’s up with the Cover? I usually enjoy Cake’s simple yet evocative album covers and this is no exception. Nice touch to have the drawing of the car upside down to represent the “b-side’ of the album.

How I Came To Know It: I was already an avowed Cake fan when this album was released, so this was just me buying their latest record on spec.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seven Cake albums, which is all of them. Of those seven “B-Sides and Rarities” is more a collection of odds and ends than a studio album, but it is close enough for me to rank it. Sadly, it falls into seventh – or last – place. It is still enjoyable, but not as good as the rest of the Cake anthology.

Ratings: 3 stars

Cake has a style that is unlike any other band I’ve heard, which makes hearing their take on songs made famous by other artists that much more interesting. Cake takes each song and reinterprets it, creating a conversation between them and the original track in the process.

The album begins with Black Sabbath’s classic “War Pigs.” I have three other versions of this song including: the original, a live version with Dio as the lead singer and a cover by Faith No More. I like all the versions, demonstrating that a great song shines through no matter what. Cake brings their amazing indie funk timing to the equation. I’m not sure there is a rock band which keeps better time than Cake, and a groove-driven song like “War Pigs” just serves as a showcase for their talents.

The hits keep coming with a cover of “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” which was made famous by Kenny Rogers some 35 years earlier. Cake takes a country song full of heartache, speeds it up and infuses it with a desperate energy that showcases the tragic lyrics in a new and yet entirely recognizable way. All cover songs wish they could be this perfect combination of deferential and clever.

Cake’s strong work continues on the rest of the album, but unfortunately the remaining songs didn’t hold my attention the same. “Mahna Mahna” is as brilliant as anything I remember from the Muppet Show (and that was good). “Excuse Me, I Think I Have a Heartache” is a nice blend of honky tonk hurt and Cake’s big-band flavoured rockabilly approach to the song. I have nothing to complain about on either song except that neither track has ever interested me overmuch. It isn’t Cake’s delivery here, so much as their choice of source material.

And this is true for most of the rest of the record, where they take on old standards from the sixties and seventies, infusing them with plenty of their unique energy, but never getting me past the fact that the songs don’t grab me.

One of the most interesting tracks is “Conroy” a Cake-composed instrumental track that walks the edge of rock and electronica. It isn’t a style I would usually enjoy but here I welcomed it, maybe the more so because it is nestled between tracks that feel dated despite Cake’s solid efforts to modernize them.

The album also has a bit of what I would call filler in the form of a live version of “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” and “It’s Coming Down” neither one of which is as good as the studio version appearing on earlier albums. The final song is another live track, this time “War Pigs.” Not only had I heard their superior studio version, it is the opening track on the same album. It just felt repetitive at that point. The album would have been better as a 6 track EP than an 11 track LP with throwaway live versions.

Despite this, the strength of “War Pigs” (studio version) and “Ruby…” made everything worth it. Even the songs that I didn’t like as much became better due to Cake’s talent, elevating this record just north of 3 stars on skill and musicianship alone.

Best tracks:  War Pigs, Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town, Conroy, Thrills

CD Odyssey Disc 781: Cake

I’ve had a hectic week, but things started to mercifully slow down over the weekend. Saturday night I was up late listening to tunes  and hanging out with fellow music enthusiasts all night. Today I settled down on the couch to enjoy the opening kickoff of the NFL season (made more enjoyable by a Miami Dolphins victory). Before I hit the sack, I’m going to get in a music review.

Disc 781 is….Fashion Nugget

Artist: Cake

Year of Release: 1996

What’s up with the Cover? A simple drawing of a crown. Would a crown be a fashion nugget for a king?

How I Came To Know It: Sheila introduced me to Cake (and to this album in particular). Around 1999/2000 she used to work at a clothing store that played cassettes of music in the background. One of the cassettes had a couple of Cake songs, including “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.” Sheila’s coworker told her the song was by Cake, and so Sheila bought the album and introduced me to the band in the process.

How It Stacks Up: We have seven Cake albums which I believe is all of them. Of the seven, “Fashion Nugget” is one of my favourites. I’ll put it second overall.

Ratings: 4 stars

As bands grow into themselves they can sometimes over-complicate the very things that made them great to begin with. That’s likely why for a lot of bands they never outdo their first album. “Fashion Nugget” is Cake’s second album, but it still has the simple brilliance of an early career record.

The basic structure of their music in 1996 was essentially the same as it is now; a concoction of R&B and funk rhythms, indie pop and traditional crooning Sinatra type stuff. However, “Fashion Nugget” feels more raw and stripped down. This starkness to the sound gives it an emotional depth. I like the more smooth flow of later albums as well, but as early Cake goes, “Fashion Nugget” is as good as it gets.

The energy of the album is best expressed on “The Distance” which is one of the great driving songs of all time. The song has an insistence that demands the reckless speed of an American muscle car. In addition to being a great driving song, it is also a clever exploration of why we metaphorically keep racing long after the race is over.

Cake seems obsessed with cars, on this album and many others as well. In addition to “The Distance,” “Fashion Nugget” also features “Race Car Ya-Yas,” and “Stickshifts and Safetybelts.” Cake has a conflicted reaction to American car culture. “Race Car Ya-Yas” is a dirge about idiot street-racer types and “Stickshifts and Safety Belts” is a rockabilly number that celebrates the romantic side of that same culture.

The album also has a fun remake of the Gloria Gaynor disco classic “I Will Survive” which is every bit the equal of the original, and may be better if only because Cake better captures the bitterness of the song’s lyrics.

The band has already mastered using trumpet flourishes to accentuate their rock and roll sound. It is a great reminder that it is the trumpet that is the companion horn to rock and roll, not the saxophone.

On this listen I noticed that “Sad Songs and Waltzes” has a little trumpet jazz interlude where they riff off the melody from “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.” It was a great way to tie some of the musical themes on the record together, and also a timely reminder that jazz interludes only work when you know the song that forms the basis of all that noodling.

Cake are masters at writing a memorable lick that sounds like it has been around for decades, and yet keeping that sound new. They are very clever songwriters, but do it in a way that doesn’t rub your face in it

The album is tastefully restricted in the same way, with 14 songs and 48 minutes of music. That does push the edge of responsible pop music making, but it is still significantly on the right side of the line.

We played “Fashion Nugget” a lot when we got it, and I think because of that I don’t pull it off the shelf as often as I should. Getting to spend some time with it over the last couple days reminded me it was time to reacquaint myself with it.

Best tracks:   The Distance, Stickshifts and Safetybelts, I Will Survive, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps, Nugget, Italian Leather Sofa, Sad Songs and Waltzes

CD Odyssey Disc 666: Cake

Given the number of this next review, I would have loved to have rolled a Black Sabbath album or maybe some Robert Johnson, but it was not to be.

Disc 666 is…. Showroom of Compassion

Artist: Cake

Year of Release: 2011

What’s up with the Cover?  For Cake covers this is pretty involved – they usually just put some graphic drawing on a manila background and call it a day. The flourish of line art adds a touch of class to this image of a tiger mauling a young child.

How I Came To Know It:  I’ve been a Cake fan for years, and this was just me buying their newest album when it came out.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seven Cake albums, which I believe is all of them. I enjoyed “Showroom of Compassion” but it still came in 6^th out of 7 albums. I like all of Cake’s albums so it isn’t a slight.

Rating: 3 stars

A great bass line can go a long way, but you’ve got to work some new tricks on that old dog as well if you want to keep making good records fifteen years into a music career. Cake demonstrates ably on “Showroom of Compassion” that they can do both and for the most part, do it well.

“Showroom” is largely standard Cake fare, featuring the ironically detached but strangely magnetic singing of John McCrea and generally funky bass licks from Gabe Nelson. Trumpet flourishes and basic guitar riffs are the icing on the…er…cake. The whole thing comes together nicely for a band who has long since figured out what they do, and now focus on doing it well.

The bass is particularly sweet on “Long Time” and “Moustache Man (Wasted)” where it makes everything else work. I’m not one for noticing the bass that often, but Cake really draws your attention there and makes it worth the visit. “Moustache Man” has a very similar construction to their 2001 song “Comfort Eagle.” This is unfortunate, because “Comfort Eagle” is the better track, and hearing it echoing in the background took away some of the fun I had with the new song.

Better is “Sick of You” an up-tempo sequel to “Take It All Away” their angry break up song from 2004’s “Pressure Chief” (reviewed back at Disc 431). McCrea’s bleak delivery is the perfect approach to a song about how everything you like about someone can become the very things you hate about them in the end. This can be an artist, a leader or a lover in equal measure; nothing breeds contempt like familiarity, after all.

The short instrumental “Teenage Pregnancy” attempts to create a musical caesura halfway through the album, but just drags the energy down. I found the track very – wait for it – unwanted. Bands take note – you don’t always need a pause midway through your album. Momentum can be a good thing.

In the second half of the album the band tries a few twists on their sound, to varying degrees of success. “Bound Away” is a cross between barroom swing and a sea shanty, but despite it being a good song, McCrae doesn’t have the crooner’s soul to pull it off. I’d love to hear Tom Waits or even Mark Knopfler tackle this one instead, but they’re busy writing their own great stuff these days.

“The Winter” is an introspective folk song, where the bass riff is traded in for a sparse piano piece. This song shouldn’t work for McCrae’s style either, but this time it somehow does. By singing higher in his range his detachment becomes a bit more desperate, which is what a breakup song like “The Winter” calls for. Also the lyrics here are the strongest on the album:

“The winter's chill chilled me to the bone this year

And something in my mind just got away

Being in the places where we used to be

Somehow being there without you's not the same.

“Parking lots, office parks and shopping malls

And all you left were bills you hadn't paid.

The winter's chill chilled me to the bone this year

And something in my mind just got away.”

I love that the places that they used to be are all big, emotionally empty places like parking lots and shopping malls. It is the loneliness of being surrounded by people who don’t give a damn why you look so sad. Instead, they just push past you on the way to their own business. That's a chilly truth, regardless of the weather.

Cake is known for doing innovative covers of old standards. The entry for “Showroom” is the Sinatra classic “What’s Now is Now.” The key to this song, is capturing the right mix of heroism and resignation – two people who’ve done bad things to one another, but still willing to start fresh. Cake captures the paradox perfectly, and adds a nice modern funk to it as well. I prefer the Sinatra version, but that doesn’t make Cake’s effort any less good.

Indie music is pretty diverse – there’s indie versions of folk, pop, rock. Cake is on the rock side of the equation but is also a fairly close approximation to indie funk. They throw in a lot of the other genres on “Showroom of Compassion” as well. While they didn’t blow me away with creativity, for the most part it works out well for them. I wouldn’t start your Cake collection with this record, but I wasn’t disappointed with it either.

Best tracks: Federal Funding, Long Time, Moustache Man (Wasted), Sick of You, The Winter

CD Odyssey Disc 431: Cake

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 5^th 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

CD Odyssey Disc 101: Cake

And so I enter the second hundred discs in the Odyssey. And to start it off,

Disc 101 is...Prolonging the Magic

Artist: Cake

Year of Release: 1998

How I Came To Know It: Sheila was a fan of the song "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" and "Never There" - I think she bought this album and the one that preceded it. This one has "Never There", which was a medium-sized hit in 1998.

How It Stacks Up: We have all six Cake albums (including one of remakes). Although I used to really love this album, looking at the whole collection, I'd say it is 4th or 5th at best. I'm not saying it is bad, I just like those other albums more.

Rating: 3 stars.

I know Cake's music pretty well, but I don't know much about the band - I suspect they are a college act that hit it big, and entered the mainstream. This album is a pretty good example of what they do, with a bit of the funk guitar that features in not a few of their albums, attached to an indie-pop sound. They also mix in a horn section which I think really works for them.

"Prolonging the Magic" as an album has a few songs I could live without, like the overly whimsical, "When You Sleep", which asks the question "when you sleep/where do your fingers go?" Answer - who cares. If this question has any deeper meaning, it has eluded me over many listens. If it doesn't, why the hell ask?

Other tracks really appeal to me, especially the ones that are a bit on the funkier side. I really like the guitar riff in "Satan Is My Motor", which is a song about owning a car - it has that perspective you have in college when owning your own car is exciting in its novelty.

Cake sings a lot about cars, often with a negative connotation. I don't know what that means - I suspect they are from California and sick of car culture, but I've never put that theory to a test of research.

I also really like "Sheep Go To Heaven" which is a song with a more appropriate amount of whimsy, that I actually think has a little bit more to say beyond its groovy guitar lick. Here's a few of my favourite lines:

"The grave digger puts on the forceps
The stone mason does all the work
The barber can give you a haircut
The carpenter can take you out to lunch.

I just want to play on my pan pipes
I just want to drink me some wine
As soon as you're born you start dying
So you might as well have a good time."

I like the way they refer to a doctor as a gravedigger, which is about as quick as you can jump on the whole "we're all gonna die" bandwagon as can be done.

Also, this song provides useful information. I'm sure you knew that the barber can give you a haircut, but knowing that the carpenter will take you out to lunch is pretty useful intel.

I've heard this song a lot, and I haven't successfully picked out any pan pipe playing, but maybe it's there. Technically, he doesn't say he's going to play on his pan pipes, he says he wants to. I can't play the pan pipes or the funk guitar, but I certainly know how to drink me some wine and have a good time (the dying part's a given).

Also a note on the cover. Cake loves to have these kind of weird covers, with iconic imagery and primary colours. This one, as you have seen, features a pig. Not sure if there is anything else to say. I have attempted to grok the pig in its fullness, but sometimes a pig is just a pig. I think that's the case here.

In closing, this album is fun, musically interesting and waffles between vaguely insightful and simply silly. It is a good listen, and it has a pig.

Best tracks: Satan Is My Motor, Never There, Sheep Go To Heaven, Alpha Beta Parking Lot, Cool Blue Reason.