Your Rock And Roll Lifestyle (Reviewing Cake’s Pressure Chief)

“Fred Jones, Pt. 2″ is one of those Ben Folds songs that exudes the depressing, inevitable feelings that one must feel when his or her life is in decline. Sort of an About Schmidt-type song. Damn. Nobody wants to feel like that.

John McCrea from Cake, who sang on that track for the recording Ben Folds Live, better not have that feeling. Cake’s Pressure Chief, which dropped late last year, got worse reviews than it deserved: the crack team of journalists at Rolling Stone don’t think they “push pleasure buttons like they ought to” (if anyone can tell me where the pleasure buttons are or how to push them, that information would really help me out); and cokemachineglow’s writer, who makes frequent trips to Winnipeg, pronounces, “its songs come off like b-side compliation fodder rather than a batch of fresh material.”

No one noticed that the album reflects a lot of progress in Cake’s sound: no more will they be content to release semi-lo fi pop recordings that sound enough like alternative rock to occasionally get on the radio; “The Distance” is far enough in their past now that they don’t have to be the cake of Fashion Nugget.

The lyrics are still ironic and sardonic (and they still rhyme, too!), and it still works. How can no one appreciate a song that uses multiple metaphors to describe an annoying cell phone? It’s the same schtick they use for most of their songs: think of an experience and sing about it, evoking the emotion(s) associated with it convincingly and more genuinely than one might think possible. And, like I said, it works, even if mainstream critics have never given it praise.

I get the feeling that few appreciate the lyrics because the genre it gets squeezed into isn’t supposed to put much weight on lyrics. The two songs they really hit it big with, “The Distance” and “Short Skirt, Long Jacket”, are arguably their least lyrically sophisticated. It’s funny to think about how Cake lyrics would be received if they were sung over hip-hop beats instead of alt-rock/alt-country tunes. Somebody with GarageBand: get on it.

In the meantime, I hope John McCrea and the rest of Cake don’t get too down on themselves. Their work is good, and it sounds like they’ve still got a lot of ground to explore.