Comfort Eagle

Cake's sly wordplay and taut rhythms managed to thrive in an era lousy with dumbed-down alternative rock.

"Fashion Nugget," Cake's second album, (which followed their debut "Motorcade of Generosity"), sold more than 1.5 million copies, fueled in large part by the single "The Distance," as well as songs like "Frank Sinatra," and Cake's straightforward cover of "I Will Survive."

Cake's follow-up, "Prolonging The Magic," went platinum and produced such favorites as "Sheep Go To Heaven," and "Never There."

Comfort Eagle is Cake's sharpest album yet, full of Gram Parsons-style rock, hip-hop Moogs, and Lou Reed doo-wop.

Signature vocal harmonies blend with guitars, trumpet, drum, bass and the various original percussive accompaniment to create music with soul, groove and sometimes, a country twang.

McCrea's lyrics, meanwhile, have gotten keener, meaner.
The first single "Short Skirt/Long Jacket," for example, only seems to be about a singer pining for a girl with "eyes that burn like cigarettes," until a couple of lines later you realize what he really wants is a woman with "good dividends."

While McCrea finds disaffection everywhere in the age of corporate mergers and "branding," Cake itself has grown into a tight unit.

For "Comfort Eagle," the group, McCrea, guitarist Xan McCurdy, bassist Gabriel Nelson, trumpet player Vince DiFiore, and drummer Todd Roper, recorded in the same Sacramento studio where it produced its previous albums.

The track "Arco Arena," a brief, 70s art-rock dirge that takes its name from Sacramento's corporate-sponsored sports center, the loudest arena in the NBA and the sort of place Bon Jovi might headline.

Or take the track "Meanwhile, Rick James..." McCrea wrote the song while in high school, but never recorded it.

But all of this is just talk. The real story is in the music. It's an album of music, meant to be enjoyed.