Released October 5, 2004
Genre Alternative
Length 36:16
Label Columbia
Producer Cake
Oh Cake…what the hell happened?
I understand there’s been some line-up changes but you’ve survived them before right? So why not replace the drummer. I know, I know – a drum machine never takes creative license and I’m sure you guys are tight-knit now and set in your ways but can we please stop the decent into iRockband?
If Cake’s discography is polarizing, then Pressure Chief is the embodiment of that idea. Looking still for new frontiers, the days of Beck’s apathetic droll are long dead and Cake moves away from emotion (in terribly emotive songs) by assimilating the singularity and making themselves androids.
To say the album is hit or miss is an understatement and its almost impossible to classify. It either Robotron 3000 or as backwoods as it gets, and one wonders (or googles) if some of these tracks weren’t hauled up from the vault by the resident studio bar-back to complete an album who could only achieve perfect apathy by literally not giving a **** and mailing half of it in.
But to disparage it this much is only half fair and certain tracks on this album are Cake at their best. “Wheels” and “No Phone” are paced, and robotic but incorporate some ultimately human elements as if to show the dichotomy. Wheels, which almost sounds like it was written for the live show, finishes up with a three part harmonized round with three parts - a decidedly non-robotic venture – despite singing songs about national stereotypes:
“and the muscular, German, cyborg-dudes dance with sexy French Canadians, while the overweight American’s wear their Patriotic jumpsuits” (it was 2004, hatin’ was the rage)
And No Phone is a robotic lament about the encroaching world of technology that is making us constantly connected and dehumanized. It also has the unique designation of likely being the last song to ever reference a “subway token” as I can’t imagine those are still in use in any major metropolitan area.
But when Cake’s Mech-zilla songs of an apocalyptic Matrix-dom aren’t scaring the piss out of the elderly, their playing songs like “end of the movie” which is McCrea, a guitar, and what sounds like a concertina at some point in the song. What makes him pull away to such a stark contrast can only be a slapped together album with quantity over quality to produce a contract fulfilling obligatory album made for the record industry. Cake is viciously outspoken about the industry and its commercialized form of indentured servitude and I wouldn’t think my assessment here is too off the mark.
In fact one of the albums better tracks “She’ll hang the baskets” is in fact a track from a previous album (Prolonging…I recall it being) and any time a reused track is one of the best you know it was a rough 3 months in the studio.
Once has to imagine from concert tour rhetoric that the next album is going to be a far more relaxed Cake, one which will either rise or fall based on its unbounded creative license. It’s going to be an “In Rainbows” sale option, I just hope its equal in quality. Whatever it is, its gotta be better than the piecemeal that is Pressure Chief.