Cake – Showroom Of Compassion
In a cookie cutter world, there is a band called Cake. Their cupboard runs over with a mouth watering mix of droll lyrics, nod and a wink presentation and some of the most deliciously cavity inducing lo-fi stabs of instrumental confectionery.
They have returned after the biggest break between albums in their twenty-year career with a work that sounds like, well, all of their other albums. This is not meant as a slight in any way. There is a comfort in what this band does and no amount of technological advancement will sully what is essentially a niche that only these Sacramentoites can fill.
You don’t spin a Cake album to challenge your friends but rather to join them in a gooey world of collective move and groove. It’s meant to communicate not isolate and Showroom Of Compassion does its job well. Spin this for any group of music aficionados and it will connect on some level.
This album has debuted at number one on the Billboard charts with a caveat that the band (who recognize a trait that not all America can recognize, irony) can enjoy of being the lowest-selling number-one album since Billboard began using Nielsen SoundScan to track unit sales. In a changing world there is a comfort in what Cake do. Rob Hudson www.cakemusic.com
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