CAKE: COMFORT EAGLE

Nothing sums up California’s Central Valley like Cake. It’s a twisted place. An hour outside of San Francisco and its direct suburbs to the east, it would be easy for a traveler to wonder how they ended up in the middle of Okalahoma but where every one thinks that they’re somehow better. Nowhere is that more the case than Cake’s home city of Sacramento. A humid little town that once rivaled Frisco as a gold rush launching point but who’s only importance now is that it happens to be the state capitol. There’s something charming about the place and the laid back sorts who roam its streets and Cake is certainly a product of its birthplace.

On Motorcade of Generosity and Fashion Nugget the fact that singer John McCrea sounds like he rolled out of bed after a long night of drinking and into the studio to record gems like Jolene and Daria respectively, almost had to be respected. In fact, while the music was seldom interesting – Country mixed with a Ska band’s horns on Motorcade, lost horns but a 70’s Skynard sound gained on Nugget – the witty improvised sounding lyrics and lazy singing make it perfect for baking any late afternoon in the sun with a six-pack of Miller Highlife, a couple of buddies, and a few old green lawn chairs.

Such is, tragically, not the case with their new release, Comfort Eagle. It’s not so much that the music has changed from earlier albums – a drum machine was added to the song Opera Singer for aesthetic reasons unknown – but that it sounds like they are trying too hard to stay the same. When Motorcade was released in 1994, it seemed like the antidote to those really mad guys up in Seattle who might have been the same way but for too much coffee. Yeah, Cake had problems, no, they didn’t have jobs but man, have a smoke and chill out a little. Seven years and four albums later McCrea and gang are no longer the kids with nothing to do that they were but the songs try as best they can to not give it away. Even Frank Black isn’t the same artist he was when Teenager of the Year was released. Tracks like the previously mentioned Opera Singer or Commissioning A Symphony in C commit the worst crime a songwriter or author can do: write about what they don’t know. Not only has the music failed to progress in any substantial way, but the songs sound strained for content. What does a guy from Sacramento know about Austrian Symphony or Italian Opera? What they read in an encyclopedia it would seem.

This album is far from being an atrocity committed to plastic though. Even if it sounds like they may have had a goodnights sleep before arriving in the studio, McCrea still retains a cache of charisma from his previous albums that carries it through each listening. Arco Arena, Sacramento’s largest music venue, is a clever instrumental piece evocative of the metal bands they must have seen play in the 80’s. But Cake, as a music group, seems to be trying to pull a Weezer without first having their own Pinkerton which, sadly, will make for an inevitable long, slow, terribly unexciting slide back to the nothingness from which they emerged.