Cake Ponders Rock As 'Comfort Eagle' Arrives

07/24/2001 1:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Neal Weiss

(7/24/01, 1 p.m. ET) -- Cake returns today (July 24) with its fourth album, Comfort Eagle, featuring the single "Short Skirt/Long Jacket." Comfort Eagle continues the evolution of the group's quirky modern rock sound. It's a vibe that is perhaps like no other on the current modern rock scene, and is in part an extension of Cake frontman John McCrea's longtime disdain for the cliched testosterone-driven rock sound.

McCrea tells LAUNCH that the group's sound is in part "a reactionary gesture against big, stupid rock " McCrea explains, "Although there is some rock music that I think is really great, in a general sense I felt like rock has crawled up its own bunghole. There's a sense of, I don't know, the stylistic, you know, vocal technique of yarling and just the big sort of 'grrrrr' kind of really powerful guitars and stuff I think I reacted really far against for a long time."

However, McCrea admits to LAUNCH that the band did "let the rock in," at least to an extent, on Comfort Eagle. "I think the part of rock that I guess we've allowed to exist on this album is the eighth notes on the guitar--you know, the 'ju-ju-ju-ju-ju' kind of guitar," he says. "For a couple of the songs, it was actually appropriate."

-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles

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