13.11
3:21 pm
Slightly less than a decade ago, one of my favorite bands, Cake, released the album "Pressure Chief".
Personally, I liked it as it was a Cake album. It wasn't the best Cake album and it didn't stack up to the previous four, but it was solid.
Seven motherfucking years later, they deigned to reach down from their geodesic smug hut/recording studio (solar and sense-of-self-importance powered, of course, no aluminum siding or feelings were hurt in the making of this record) and give us writhing, unworthy, licentious swine a new album.
It's called "Showroom of Compassion", it's 11 tracks and clocks in at about 41 minutes.
For all you Math Heads, that's:
- 1.57 new Cake songs per year
- 5.85 minutes of new Cake music per year
- 0.14 new Cake albums per year.
Give or take.
So.
The big question on everybody's* lips was: how the shit are Cake going to make an eleven track, forty-one minute album that's worth the seven years during which they produced NOTHING.
The simple answer is that they did not.
But.
But.
They DID manage to make an eleven track, forty-one minute album that's worth about three and a half of the seven years during which they produced nothing.
Much like 2001's "Comfort Eagle" marked Cake altering their tried and true Cake style of making Cake music, "Showroom of Compassion" does a little of that as well, with "more reverb" and "more piano" (so sayeth the band). Despite the presence of both "more reverb" and "more piano", it's a Cake album, pure and simple, and it's good.
Some of it.
There's a little bit of everything on "Showroom"; 'Sick of You' and 'Long Time' cover the "Cake radio single" angle while 'Bound Away' takes care of the "token waltz" and 'Federal Funding' gets filed under "snarky, over-obvious political songs". There's even an addition to the seldom replenished "instrumental" folder with 'Teenage Pregnancy'.
Then there are a few extremes: 'Got To Move' (a song about how this person has got to move) and 'What's Now Is Now' (a song about how what's going on now...fuck you) are extremely boring songs that both seem so Cake-like as to actually borrow riffs and chord progressions from other Cake songs (whether or not this is actually the case, I'm not certain, but either way it amounts to the same) while "Easy To Crash" and "The Winter" do things other Cake songs never have. The former is a chilling reflection on how easy suicide is and the latter takes a sour look at the holidays and the winter season in general (alcohol, cigarettes and luxury goods/Christmas lights look desperate in this room/winter's light left me in the dark last night/and jingle bells are smothered in this gloom). Both songs stand out impressively and give the album that extra 0.5 reviewers should be tacking on when more reviews come out.
Another noteworthy change that Cake fans will pick up on is the final track, 'Italian Guy'. While it's not a great track, it breaks Cake's career long tradition of having final tracks that sound like final tracks. That might not really make sense, but Cake albums traditionally end with a slight downer of a song, more serious and grounded sounding whereas 'Italian Guy' is rife with playful staccato strings and floaty trumpets, leaving the listener with a sense of whimsy rather than closure, so whimsical at times that it sounds like it could have been done by They Might Be Giants in the 80's. Whatever the case, I prefer Cake's usual formula when it comes to album enders, but it is an interesting switch.
"Showroom of Compassion" is a good Cake album (the most back loaded in memory), better than their last.
It has more layers than one would expect from Cake, synths hiding behind and tagging along with the trademark Cake horn parts or echoing and harmonizing with the trademark Cake bass lines, making this their first album that requires some headphone listening.
It shows progress and that is terribly exciting.
But it's not worth waiting seven fucking years to hear.
Yes, I am still pissed about that.
However, I'd like to offer a solution: take less time to make albums.
Just throwing it out there, Cake.
Anyway, if you're a Cake fan, get the album, you'll like it, and you'll probably be less angry than me.
* My
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