pop-culture for the people

Those who hear the name CAKE already know a little bit of what to expect from their latest album.  And if you like what they’ve done in their last four records, then you’ll probably like the fifth.  To me, CAKE has always seemed like a marriage of country music and The Cars: one part twang, one part new wave, and a healthy dose of wit.  On Pressure Chief, each of these elements seems to have been intensified, but the feeling of 80’s pop is starting to emerge as the main theme.

There’s one big reason for this.  After Fashion Nugget, the album with the most famous of CAKE tunes, “The Distance,” about half of the original band left.  Jon McCrea, lead singer, was left as the main songwriter and did a fantastic job with the follow-up, the fittingly-titled Prolonging the Magic.  Then, when working on the next album, the drummer got up and left.  Instead of hiring a new guy, McCrea decided to add to his own musical resume.  He became virtuoso of the drum machine, which gave the album Comfort Eagle a tight structure not heard in CAKE before.  It was a little off-putting at first, but once you got used to it the album was pretty good and just as catchy as the earlier ones. 

On Pressure Chief, McCrea goes one step beyond drum machines.  Now the Atari-era bleeps and bloops of a Casio keyboard can be heard on almost every song.  It can be very strange at first to hear this mixed in with trumpets and a twanging electric guitar, but it works, especially on the first single, “No Phone.”  Never before has one of McCrea’s songs had such energy and atmosphere, and it’s the robotic drumming and creative production styles that get it there.  CAKE’s songs have always had a structure that is catchy and repetitive, but now they’re trying to break it up with more sonic surprises and I like it.

I also like the fact that, for what I think is the first time, McCrea actually SINGS during the entire album!  The spoken-word stuff has its place (or maybe it doesn’t anymore.  We’ll see once the reviews for William Shatner’s new album come out) and it sounded great on songs like “The Distance” and “Short Skirt, Long Jacket,” but I’m glad that McCrea’s finally showing us that he can carry a tune.  For the most part, too, the lyrics are up to par with past albums.  McCrea lives in the Sacramento area, and he has always poked fun at the hip coastal California lifestyle in his lyrics.  In the new album he states his opinion on being a pedestrian in a world of cars and polluted air, and manages to mock punk rock at the same time in “Carbon Monoxide.”  In “Wheels,” he sings about the “muscular cyborg German dudes” who “dance with sexy French Canadians” in a karaoke bar.  By the end of the album, though, it’s almost as if McCrea just ran out of steam.  “She’ll Hang the Baskets” is one of the weakest CAKE songs ever, and “Palm of Your Hand” and “Tougher than It is” end the album on an uninspired note.  Only the quiet, intimate “End of the Movie” keeps the last half of the album from being completely forgettable.

Pressure Chief is an extremely short album, running at about 35 minutes.  However, it’s enough.  A CAKE fan doesn’t expect a rock opera or groundbreaking new sounds or sudden changes in direction, like a Radiohead album or even a band like Wilco.  We just want some catchy new hooks and some fun new lyrics to recite, and this is something CAKE always delivers.  Pressure Chief will satisfy until the next album comes out, when only Jon McCrea is left in a room with all the instruments, playing and recording everything by himself.  Hey, Ben Folds pulled it off.

Rating:   Three and a half monkeys out of five.  Or four.  Or whatever.  The album’s “pretty good.”

What the rest of our team thinks:

Andy Warhol: “Repetition?  Pop?  Wit?  Well I’m glad I inspired someone, anyway.

John Kerry: “I’m John Kerry, and I approve of this album.”

Fisherman McGee: “That lead singer stole my hat!”