The artist of this week is Cake. Cake is probably not too well known, but when I first heard the song “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” off of their Comfort Eagle album in 2001 I was hooked.
After receiving this album as a Christmas present some five years ago I incorporated at least one song from Cake on almost every CD I made in the ensuing years, and still to this day I enjoy bobbing my head along to songs like “Opera Singer”, or “Commissioning A Symphony In C”.
Comfort Eagle was the most successful album of the Sacramento based band. The band for the album consisted of: singer John McCrea, guitarist Xan McCurdy, drummer Todd Roper, bassist Gabe Nelson, and trumpeter Vince Difiore.
Cake’s songs I don’t think can be labeled into a specific genre of music. While they are referred to as Pop in their CD description, they are far more experimental than typical Pop is.
Their songs typically have many different musical elements that come in and out of play, including trumpets and several different guitar sounds.
The guitar sounds can differ from almost purely acoustic, to a much heavier distorted sound in the song “Arco Arena”, which has both types. Furthermore their songs often have more complex base riffs than one usually finds in songs with lyrics like this.
Many of their songs also incorporate trumpets, such as previously mentioned “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”. The trumpets add a very unique element to their songs because most mainstream bands don’t use older wind instruments anymore.
The lyrics of Cake’s songs are what really make them stand out. Every song tells a story in immaculate detail; with just the right amount of focus to not only get you into the mood to feel good, but also to envision a scene. Take these lyrics from “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”:
“She’s changing her name from Kitty to Karen, she’s trading her NG for a white Chrysler Le Baron, I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket.”
In this stunningly visual line, the singer states that he essentially wants a girl like his mom! If one wants to interpret it that way. That song especially still has people guessing as to what it “really” means.
Cake is still around today, although you wouldn’t know it with my focus on one of their oldest albums. The only CAKE songs currently played on stations such as Live 105 are actually from their albums previous to Comfort Eagle.
One of the songs currently played is called “Never There”. While the story is pretty usual, a woman cheating on a man, the song has an awesome beat to it that just punches you in the dance part of your soul.
The other song that is currently played is a cover of “I Will Survive” originally sung by Gloria Gaynor. The two songs have the exact same lyrics, but Cake’s version is much slower and this makes all the difference with the two songs sounding almost unrecognizable next to each other.
Cake has released two albums since Comfort Eagle, but neither has been as successful.
According to their website, Cake is currently on tour, and has been so for almost a year. On their website you can hear their music for yourself. Their newest CD is composed of B-sides and Rarities, such as a cover of “War Pig” originally by Black Sabbath, and a cover of Barry White’s “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up”. As with their other covers they sound completely different from the original songs, alot like Cake themselves, not bad different, just different.