CAKE - Showroom Of Compassion

A cruel fate, the one reserved for bands like Cake: not mainstream enough to really break through, not sophisticated enough to win over snobbish tastes. The script is the usual one: a couple of alternative hits that put them in the spotlight ("The Distance" and "Never There", in this case, both released in the second half of the Nineties), a major-label deal that fails to deliver the hoped-for results, and, in the end, a more or less predictable return to independence. In the more than six years since their previous effort ("Pressure Chief"), John McCrea and co. have left Columbia and launched their own record label, Upbeat Records, inaugurated a couple of years ago with a (not exactly essential) collection of b-sides and rarities.

"Showroom Of Compassion" thus celebrates Cake's twentieth anniversary without giving up the band's unmistakable trademark sound: anyone who remembers them for their irresistible cover of "I Will Survive", or for that "Short Skirt / Long Jacket" which became the theme tune of the popular TV series "Chuck", will have no trouble recognizing them here. From the very first single, "Sick Of You" (which leapt into the top 5 of Billboard's alternative rock chart, something that hadn't happened since their glory days), the Sacramento band once again shows off its groove-laden bass-and-guitar interplay, tex-mex horns, and ever-incorrigible slacker attitude. Everything needed to raise the fateful question once again: how is it possible that a band like Cake has never risen above cult-band status?

"It's been a long time": right from the opener, Cake wink at their long absence from the scene. But listening to "Showroom Of Compassion", time doesn't seem to have passed all that much for the Californians. McCrea himself knows it well: "I'm sure everyone will say our new record sounds exactly like everything we've done before, even though I think it's profoundly different." It's a matter of nuances, like those of the keyboards that lend the songs unprecedented Seventies tones. But "Showroom Of Compassion" announces itself, right from the cover art, as a 100% Cake-branded record: McCrea's voice and Vince Di Fiore's trumpet speak for themselves, even if the infectious exuberance of albums like "Fashion Nugget" and "Prolonging The Magic" — no point denying it — remains a distant memory.

Songs come first: that's Cake's philosophy. "Every song should be allowed to do whatever it wants, instead of imposing some artificial intellectual construct on it." Songs that invite you to join the party, swaying to the crackling funk of "Mustache Man (Wasted)". Songs with a melodic stamp that would make Weezer proud, from "The Winter" to "Got To Move". Songs that dig back up the band's roots with a slightly off-kilter gait, as in the country waltz of "Bound Away". Serving as a dividing line is the instrumental excursion "Teenage Pregnancy", which lets a piano music-box melody guide it through western landscapes worthy of the Calexico of the "Feast Of Wire" era.

Of course, there's no shortage of simple filler moments, nor of yet another cover: this time it's Frank Sinatra's "What's Now Is Now" (always one of Cake's musical heroes), reworked in the style of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours". Between baroque flourishes ("Italian Guy") and a late-Beck-like spirit ("Easy To Crash"), Cake don't give up their sarcastic streak, poking fun in "Federal Funding" at an America addicted to government subsidies. Even the album's title, "Showroom Of Compassion", sounds like an anti-hypocrisy manifesto: after all, the band is no stranger to political and environmental stances, as shown by their choice to record the album in a studio powered exclusively by solar energy.

Despite the various lineup changes the band has gone through over the years, Cake's identity remains unchanged: too consistent with themselves, some might say (remember "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody in "Close But No Cigar"?). But trying to shock at all costs has never been their concern. Cake are content to keep doing what they do best: perpetuating the noble art of the pop song. Proudly out of fashion.

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14/01/2011