As long as John McCrea is making music as the frontman for Cake, there is going to be a recognizable voice within 15 seconds of any track.
That voice is going to be spitting some weird stuff.
"Pressure Chief" is Cake's fifth record and is no great leap for the band responsible for the radio staples, "The Distance," "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" and "Never There." That doesn't mean it isn't good. Anyone with a taste for Cake should have "Pressure Chief" in stable rotation in no time.
There are some differences. The band has sprinkled in more of an electronic influence with keyboards and programming and has an entirely new rhythm section in Xan McCurdy and Gabriel Nelson. It's just that it doesn't much sound like the band made a change.
Sure, ex-Cakers Todd Roper and Greg Vincent both make appearances on two songs a piece, but it's evident that the band's bread and butter is in the minds of McCrea and musician extraordinaire Vincent Di Fiore.
"Pressure Chief's" highlight is "She'll Hang the Baskets." Featuring guest star Chuck Prophet and another ex-Caker in Tyler Pope, the song has a little bit of country to it via Vincent's pedal steel guitar and sounds remarkably similar to a Catholic hymn, "Were You There?"
"End of the Movie" is another standout track. Di Fiore's melodica works well keyboards and an unlisted acoustic instrument, most likely a mandolin or a banjo in a different tuning. The song puts to the forefront McCrea's talent at adding nonsense to standard lyrics:
"Come summer, come fall, come winter/ they'll be baskets on the floor/ he'll go to buy her Turtle Wax/ but in his mind he won't be coming back."
Dismissing hip-hop. It's a safe bet to wager against hearing Turtle Wax shining up anyone else's words. McCrea has this way of mingling household products and techniques with heartbreak that few could mimic: not that anyone is trying. It certainly gives hope to past, present and future homemakers of America.
McCrea's melodies have always alternated between a kind of hymnal style in his slower tempo work and a rowdy yell in his faster tunes. In fact, that statement can almost be ignored if consideration is given to the fact that McCrea has always been more of a melodic talker than a singer.
"Pressure Chief" ends with "Tougher Than It Is," a traditional Cake remark on the average person's frivolous troubles with life. From the monthly global awareness catchphrase on the front page of their Web site to their condemnation of high priced goods and poor economics, Cake is anything but a standard band.
But their recipe is classic.
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