The Cake Discography Thread

[6underground]

Originally Posted by TheBig3KilledMyRainDog

Be prepped for that review. I'm taking that album out behind the woodshed.

Noted.

[Billystyle]

If I may, I think I'll share my top 10 Cake songs and recommend them to any new listeners.

Motorcade of Generosity
Jolene - Such a great feel good song. I listen to this many early mornings when I'm going outside. Just a quality piece of work. Great lyrics as well.
Rock & Roll Lifestyle - Good humor, nice little jam.
Mr. Mastodon Farm - Such a random song with great little sounds. They really get into their percussion with this one. I've noticed that if you listen to this one in the car, it often makes people look around to see if something is rattling in the car, the song has little clicking sounds as if there's something amiss. Good stuff.

Fashion Nugget
Friend is a Four Letter Word - Still not sure what it is about this song. It's just a classic. I also had it stuck in my head all day once while snowboarding.
Stickshifts & Safetybelts - Such a great song. I think it takes me back to my farm town redneck roots.
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps - This one is just kind of a fun tune. Great trumpet work.

Prolonging the Magic
Guitar - This song is a work of art. It features the musical saw and plenty of vibraslap (that wood block and ball with a springy metal bar, sounds like a power rattle).
Cool Blue Reason - I love the change of sound. This has a nice slow pace groove to it.

Comfort Eagle
Opera Singer - Little claps and short guitar riffs and of course trumpet make this a fun song.
Arco Arena - This song is just a short instrumental piece. It's a short example of what I'd love to hear more of; Cake jamming on their instruments. If I remember right, they opened with this the one time I saw them live.

Pressure Chief - Haven't quite got as into this album yet, and didn't want to make the list go past 10. Perhaps this is the week I'll give it more of a chance.

Great thread TheBig3KilledMyRainDog! Thanks!

[anabundanceoftubes]

its probably best described as the song Paul McCartney would have written had he moved to the Western Coast of the United States, got a drinking problem and wandered the inner city for weeks discovering ennui.

That is excellent! And completely true.

[chak]

awesome thread

Satan Is My Motor is one of my Top 25 all time favorite songs and along with "Shot Down In Flames" (ac/dc) and "Purple Haze" (hendrix) one of my three personal theme songs in life.



big ups to all Cake fans

[TyrantSong]

I love CAKE alot, but aside from a few stand out tracks, I get burnt out on them easily.

Regardless, great reviews, makes me want to go back and listen to all the albums in order now.

[TheBig3]

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.

[Bulldog]

Quite a while back I lost about 2000 songs in the process of moving them all to my external hard drive and, unfortunately, all the contents of Motorcade Of Generosity were among them. That was about 4 or 5 months ago, and I kinda forgot about them 'til recently. I do remember being impressed with it though (I seem to remember mentioning that somewhere in this thread as well). I've got quite a bit of new music on my plate at the minute, but seeing this updated's reminded me I need to dig around Cake's back-catalogue a bit more, so cheers for that.

Good job with the thread as well - some great reads in here.

[alexisawessome]

the one and only song i've heard from them was "short skirt/long jacket". i heard it from the movie "waitress" soundtrack. i fell in love with the song, looked it up on the internet and added it on my ipod. any other good tracks from them that you'd like to recommend?

[music_phantom13]

Just found this thread, thank you for the reviews big3. Cake played a big part in getting me into alternative rock back in elementary/middle school, they've been with me or a while. I cannot believe how many people on here haven't heard of Cake, I thought they were more popular. They're one of a pretty small group of alternative bands that I listen to that at least get some radio play. I never saw this thread before though and I enjoyed your reviews.

[TheBig3]

Released July 24, 2001
Recorded Paradise Studios in Sacramento, CA, with additional recording at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco, CA
Genre Alternative rock
Funk rock
Length 36:55
Label Columbia
Producer Cake

I came in here to write up Showroom of Compassion and realized I never did a review for Comfort Eagle (which seems odd. Was it deleted?). Anywho, here goes.

If you've never heard CAKE before, this is the album to come in on. While "The Distance" still stands as the most identifiable single, and "Sheep go to Heaven" still seems to be the one everyone can sing along with (even if they've never heard it before), Comfort Eagle as an album is the most wildly accessible.

If you own Jesus Lizard albums, that sounds like a bad thing, but CAKE, while not a pop-band, has never been afraid to write a melody. The most identifiable song on the album is easily "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" who's opening trumpet blast and breakdown drum-bookends have wound up in commercials, television shows, and anywhere else corporate america could have shoved it. If nothing else, the single is absolutely indicative of CAKE's mash-up sound: funky bassline, glory-of-the-day trumpeting, and a deadpan vocal line so flat its vegas cool.

But the albums strength is largely due to its strong support cast. Many songs could have functioned as the lead single had SS,LJ not been on the album. Long Line of Cars, Love you Madly, and Pretty Pink Ribbon are some of the most pop-friendly material in the entirety of the CAKE Discograpy. Even "Meanwhile, Rick James..." and "Shadow Stabbing" both ended up on the soundtrack to the film "Orange County."

One of the more "experimental" tracks (as experimental as a CAKE song can be when compared to the other songs) is the song "Comfort Eagle." CAKE brings into the mix, for what appears to be the first time, Indian-influences and creates one of the more odd-ball songs on the album, foreshadowing the mind-set that would come to dominate Pressure Chief.

A great deal of symphonic acrobatics went into the production here. Not strings and horns, but layers and layers (as is a staple of CAKE's more sparse tracks) of vocal harmonies, claps, layered trumpet and piano. If the track is a little left-of-center, it doesn't disappoint the fan base in the slightest. The Track was almost made for the live show (and CAKE should be seen as a band who's stronger on the Stage than the Album), with enough call-and-response portions, iconic shout-points ("you can dress up like a sultan in your onion-head hat" & "the wacky morning DJ said democracies a joke"), and groove to keep everyone in the crowd in the moment.

Comfort Eagle may not be the strongest album for older fans. Theres no notable country influence on this album which appears, at least once, on every other album. It also introduced more strongly than other albums a synthesizer and drum machine. I no longer have my CD sleeve but I recall no consistent drummer being featured on the album. This doesn't necessarily mean it was all drum machine, McCrea himself plays drums as well as one other member (if I recall correctly).

If Comfort Eagle is anything, its the "band album." The introspective songs from McCrea seem to be noteably absent from this album, and it strikes one as a decidedly pop album. CAKE, who've never been pro-record industry in 2001 are moving toward the end of their contractual obligation, and this might be the one, final push of appeasement (again, not a bad thing) before they do whatever the hell they want (On PC, the final album with Columbia).

Recommendations:

1. Comfort Eagle
2. Long Line of Cars
3. Love you Madly

1. "Opera Singer" (McCrea, Mark Kornweibel) – 4:06
2. "Meanwhile, Rick James..." – 3:57
3. "Shadow Stabbing" (McCrea, George Kane) – 3:07
4. "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" – 3:24
5. "Commissioning a Symphony in C" – 2:59
6. "Arco Arena" – 1:31
7. "Comfort Eagle" – 3:40
8. "Long Line of Cars" – 3:24
9. "Love You Madly" – 3:58
10. "Pretty Pink Ribbon" – 3:08
11. "World of Two" – 3:41