Cake - Comfort Eagle Review
Posted by Brendan Johnston on 09.23.2002
"Cake or Death?!" "Cake, please."... Inside joke, don't worry about it.
(Steps up to the microphone, clears throat.) Um, hello... can you hear me in the back? (Pulls the mic higher.) Okay, uh, I... my name is Brendan Johnston and I... I don't know anything about music.
There it is, folks. If you couldn't tell from my last two reviews, I'm a lyrics man. As a writer, when I listen to music I listen to the words; what the singer is saying as opposed to the guitars or drum behind him is the important thing to me. Thus am I a fan of artists like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, especially when you can understand what they're saying, which is rare, and which is why most Springsteen and Dylan albums come with the lyrics in the liner notes.
Which brings me to my latest review, of Cake's Comfort Eagle. First off, apparently hanging out with Tom Cocozza all the time has caused me to catch "buys really short albums" disease. Comfort Eagle clocks in at a little under thirty-seven minutes. Of course at twelve bucks from Best Buy it's not that bad a buy. Ahh, Best Buy. For a fledgling music critic on a fixed income, it's the only way to fly.
What to call Cake? I don't know. Robin on the AIM doesn't know either. The label "alternative," frankly, means nothing anymore. Alternative to what, exactly? Maybe they're alterna-pop. Pop-ternative? Who cares, really? They're like a weird mix of pop, and funk, I guess. Tom Cocozza calls them the Devo of the '90s. Not an inaccurate description.
Anyway, the album...
Here's a blanket statement; even as a lyrics guy, none of the music on this album is anything to write home about. Mildly funk-ish guitar riffs and a muted trumpet over a drum machine are a backdrop to lead "singer" John McCrea's monotonously spoken vocals.
Comfort Eagle opens with "Opera Singer," a catchy little ditty about... well, an opera singer. Fair warning, folks; I'm going to be using the phrase "catchy little ditty" about a hundred more times in this review. "Opera Singer" is far and away my favorite song on the album and an example of what I like about this group. A simple, sometimes predictable song that's about what it's about and that's it.
"Meanwhile, Rick James..." follows. Apparently about a somewhat out of hand house party, McCrea sing/speaks this one with the same level of disaffected tone as the rest of the album, and the chorus is apparently an attempt to get everyone to think they're weird. Which they are. So there you go.
"Shadow Stabbing" is the third track, and seems to be about a hard-at work writer. "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" is next, the single from the album. Most of you have seen the video with people on the street being interviewed about their opinions of the song. The video overshadows the song, which is another catchy little number about the singer's search for the ideal woman. It's also the most musically cliché of the album, with the band echoing McCrea and throwing in some "na na na"s at the end.
Track five, "Commissioning a Symphony in C" is, in my mind, a companion piece to "Opera Singer." The Austrian nobleman of the song is probably one of the crowned heads that the main character of the first track has performed for. It has the same fairy-tale quality as "Opera Singer"
The sixth track is called "Arco Arena" and is instrumental. This is what I get for declaring myself a lyrics man; a forty minute album with a freakin' instrumental track. It's not bad, and sounds like it should be the theme to a Soderbergh movie with George Clooney walking around someplace with this song playing underneath.
The title track, "Comfort Eagle" follows. Probably the best song on the album, about the charming leader of a cult=like organization, it's another one of the album's "catchy little numbers" with the chorus of ":He is calling you DUDE!" having been stuck in my head for the last three weeks.
The last track on the album I find worth listening to is "Pretty Pink Ribbon." Addressed to an unknown person, probably a girl, with the chorus of "Without the Pretty Pink Ribbon, you'd end up just like me," it's the least straightfoward song on the album.
In each of my reviews thus far, I've listed one song that I consistently skip; it was "Worlds Apart" for The Rising and "Double Team" for Tenacious D. Well, Comfort Eagle has the distinction of having three tracks that I just don't listen to anymore. After "Comfort Eagle" I skip over "Long Line of Cars" and "Love You Madly, then go back to "Opera Singer" rather than listen to "World of Two."
Comfort Eagle is an album that defines the band Cake for me. It's full of songs that are about just what they appear to be about. "Opera Singer" may get stuck in your head all day, but don't try to figure out what it's about while you sing it in the car, because there's no deeper meaning. In an era when everyone and their dog is trying to be about something, Cake dares to be simple, and that, more than anything else, makes them worth listening to.
The 411: Short enough to be classified a Cupcake, Comfort Eagle features a number of simple, catchy songs and one head-bopping instrumental track, and is recommended if you can find it on the cheap side.
