Cake specializes in messages you may find hard to swallow. On the long-running band's latest album, every gadget, transportation system and romantic goal meant to bring excitement, ease and fulfillment only emphasizes our shallowness and fear.
In "Got to Move," a character flits about, proclaiming his need for constant progress, when in fact he's just a nervous coward. In "Bound Away," a character travels farther and farther, only to end up nowhere (think George Clooney in "Up in the Air"). But "Sick of You" features the most representative couplet: "Every shiny toy that first brings you joy/will always start to cloy and annoy."
Amazingly, that woeful prediction hasn't proven true for Cake itself. Fifteen years after they batted out their first left-field hit with "The Distance," the band's sound and words still have bite - and an audience.
It helps that leader John McCrea created a first: Before him, no one thought to mix Dick Dale-style surf-rock with Herb Alpert-like lounge-pop. Skinny guitars trade licks with valiant Mexican horns in Cake's music, while white-boy funk beats rumble below. McCrea's nasal vocals hold equal distinction. They reek of distance and judgment, a bonus when you're delivering lyrics as barbed as a comedian's punch line.
In the '90s, Cake became part of a movement of snarkmeisters - along with Barenaked Ladies and Weezer - all aiming to contradict the earnest whine of grunge. If McCrea has changed the recipe of Cake's lineup in the years since, his sensibility has provided a solid through-line.
"Showroom" is Cake's first release in six years, and it proposes a risky switch. There's far less of the group's trademark trumpet, which doesn't arrive until halfway through, first in a song ("Mustache Man") that uses a corny image of '70s macho to create a kind of anti-nostalgia anthem. That's in pointed contrast to boomers' obsession with their own past.
The new CD also features prettier, Beatles-like harmonies, which help smooth out the sarcastic organ work and nerdy synths. The band breaks things up further with a chamber piece ("Italian Guy") and an instrumental only McCrea would think to title "Teenage Pregnancy."
It's a measure of McCrea's depth that he can include only one entirely earnest song ("The Winter") and not end up coming off like a jokester or crank. He may push that with "Italian Guy," which contains so much contempt that even the strings seem to look at the main character askance. But it's to his great credit that, in the end, McCrea makes even his most grimly observational songs seem strangely sincere.
jfarber@nydailynews.com
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