Cake - Showroom Of Compassion
- Written by Dannii Leivers
It would be naive to suggest that a lot of bands these days reform for anything other than a fistful of cold hard cash - for better or for worse, whether we like it or not, nostalgia has become a profitable commodity. While every now and then its exploitation can gift us the opportunity to see the likes of Pavement or Pulp rattle through their bulging back catalogues once again, for every Blur, there’s a Limp Bizkit waiting in the wings.
Then of course there’s the bands who don’t quite fit the mould, who slinked off on hiatus so quietly you didn’t even notice they weren’t making albums anymore. Whose motivations were so palpably undetermined by money it’s unthinkable that they were offered anything to return at all.
Enter Sacramento, California’s indie-wonkers Cake, whose first and biggest hit single was almost fifteen years ago with the offbeat, drawling ‘The Distance’ – a minor hit in the UK but top five in the US. And they’ve never managed to better it until now. Showroom of Compassion, their sixth album, became the band’s first number one album, although holding the honour of being the lowest ever selling number one album in American history. Ouch.
Coming after a lengthy seven year hiatus, in that time the world has changed, not least the music industry. Evidently spurred on by early sessions, front man John McCrea announced the album was going to sound “very different.” Certainly the band decided to record it using only solar power, and introduced pianos to their arsenal of instruments, but the biggest palpable departure from the traditional Cake sound is McCrea’s penchant for singing as opposed to his droll spoken word schtick, a concept continued from last album Pressure Chief. Certainly it makes the band sound less like a poor mans Beck. Yet after such a long break there’s something irksomely steadfast and about Cake’s comeback. What was the point in their absence? What exactly was the point in their return?
Always known for an amalgamation of styles, juxtaposing ska, funk and rock amid guitar driven pop lines and trumpet solos, even such a hotchpotch approach to making music can wear thin over time. And Cake’s sporadic tendency to dip in and out of genres is something that only seems to work on paper. Few of the songs here can hold attention. None create the excitement such a method should naturally be able to spark, for instance, ‘Long Time’ employs a repetitive wafer thin melody, McCrea’s usual impassive delivery only serving to further flatten the overall sound.
While the band has always been noted for their quirky, often sarcastic lyrics, Showroom of Compassion for the most part thinks it’s cleverer than it really is. Furthermore, yawningly they’re still talking about the same things. While there’s no rants about Carbon Monoxide poisoning here, like most Cake records, after seven years there’s still the frequent lyrical references to cars. As McCrea croons “You are mostly in your car, you always seem so far, no matter where you are, you’re thinking of your car” on ‘Got To Move’, the banality of it all is cringeworthy.
It’s not all bad though. Opener ‘Federal Funding’ boasts a slouchy bassline and poker-faced vocals while ‘The Winter’ is the first time the band eschews their deadpan façade for genuine emotion. Lead single ‘Sick of You’ is melodically predictable but provides the albums only real upbeat, funky moment and a welcome break from the malaise.
Really it seems that even after a seven year hiatus Cake are struggling to inject any kind of freshness into their material. Showroom of Compassion is undoubtedly the sound of a band comfortable with their sound and reforming for the sheer love of what they do – the fact they’ve stuck so rigidly to familiarity is proof of that. It’s just a shame that so many of these songs are water-biscuits, as weighty as plywood and worthy of a second-rate Beck B-side.