Dilemma In The Frosting

10/22/1998 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Ken Micallef

Cake's 1996 hit "The Distance" cemented the Sacramento quintet's reputation as tuneful purveyors of biting sarcasm and droll wit. Contrasting drag-racing imagery with a tale of spurned love, the song's bumping guitar grind was offset by whistling theremins, off-kilter trumpet, and singer John McCrea's deadpan delivery. "Bowl-shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse assail him, impale him with monster-truck force," McCrea sang, helping to make the song one of the most unusual lyric vehicles since Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park."

Like Martin Amis doing American Bandstand, McCrea's persona as sharp-tongued cynic in a land of dullards sets the band apart, along with the fresh, mariachi-flavored tunes of their sophomore effort, Fashion Nugget. But that album's successor, Prolonging The Magic, is Cake with the mittens off. With the departure of bassist Victor Damiani and guitarist Greg Brown, McCrea takes over as head bottle-washer and chief songwriter. Brown actually wrote "The Distance," and therein lies the rub.

"John can be difficult to be around," says drummer Todd Roper. "That Greg wrote the hit and John received all the attention created a lot of tension in the band. We would often travel across the country in our van and not say a word to each other for six hours straight. That was normal for us."

With Damiani and Brown off in their new band, Deathray, McCrea's crabby image takes centerstage. He can pen a catchy tune, as he proved on Fashion Nugget's "Daria" and "Friend Is A Four Letter Word." The singalong "Satan Is My Motor," the lovely, Hawaiian guitar-infused "Mexico," the slippery spy rumba of the single "Never There," and the pensive "Cool Blue Reason" are equally convincing here. But 13 songs of troubled love and drunken navel-gazing (such as "Hem Of Your Garment," "Alpha Beta Parking Lot," and "Sheep Go To Heaven") can also work to prolong the pain, not the magic.

"John is a great songwriter," says Roper. "You'd pay a thousand dollars for this kind of quality in Nashville. John is a great bullshitter, he can talk about anything for hours with the best of them. It's all bullshit, but it's great bullshit."

Even Roper seems unsure of how to cast McCrea, gushing over his talents one moment, condemning his fondness for power the next. On the eve of Prolonging The Magic's release, and a performance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, Cake seems a band with more to sort out than to look forward to.

"This album is all about the hat and the goatee," explains Roper, in reference to McCrea's ever-present fisherman's cap and chin hair. "It's about John's great songs and his vision. Some of these are his oldest songs, but they are also some of his best. I may criticize him, but it's done in a spirit of love."