Cake

All the usual components formulaically surface on Cake's fifth album: matadorian trumpet, quirky Moog riffs, allocated bursts of old guitar tones, click-track rhythm and John McCrea's robotic talk-singing style and off-mic yelps. Hey, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, right? Their version of Bread's "The Guitar Man" is awesome.

Considering that Cake's best-known songs include a deadpan cover of "I Will Survive" and
the cartoonishly inspirational hit "The Distance," it's easy to see why so many of us
underestimated this Northern California band. But now that their alt-rock moment is past,
Cake's sound is more palatable and kind of small. Their fifth album is full of well-placed
synth blips and light funk grooves, and with John McCrea's baritone toned way d... More >