Showroom Of Compassion by Cake

The great tragedy of Cake is that, although for a brief period in the middle '90s they achieved a certain degree of mainstream recognition for their ironic cover of Gloria Gaynor's 1978 hit single "I Will Survive," the group's particular brand of irony depended heavily on the Gen X conceit that disco was "lame": when disco–or, rather, styles of music that were direct descendants of disco–became popular again, so popular as to banish from the Billboard charts virtually any song with even a remote alt-rock influence, the joke no longer worked and so the legacy of the cover can be likened to that of "Rappin' Duke," an early parody of rap music. So now when an electro beat or G-funk synth inexplicably crop up in a Cake song, they tend to amuse less than they confuse; they contain no intrinsic comedic value and sound more like earnest homage paid, but why?

Their sixth studio album, Showroom of Compassion, finds Cake reprising the musical aesthetic of their previous release, 2004's Pressure Chief: Beatlesque guitar riffs and John McCrea using his voice in a (slightly) more melodic way–with a few hardly monumental additions such reverb and acoustic piano on "Teenage Pregnancy"–though it's arguably some of the worst piano playing ever committed to a record released by even a less reputable independent record label than Upbeat. A recurrent problem of the album, in addition to apathetically sloppy playing and lazy or haphazard song construction, is that many of its longer tracks such as "Easy to Crash" and "Mustache Man" deteriorate into aimless jams as an ineffective antidote to their ill-conceived aimlessness, the latter featuring some especially silly trumpeting from the closest thing to a real musician in the band, Vince DiFiore.

The album's strongest tracks, "Federal Funding"–which leads off with the tinny, under-driven chugging guitars that have by now become something of an instantly recognizable trademark for the group, over which John McCrea vaguely rallies against plutocratic excesses in what sounds like broken English–and "The Winter" find the band exercising restraint (much as they did on Pressure Chief's pretty little "End of the Movie") and better still maintaining a single consistent mood for a track's duration. Clutter may be the perennial stumbling block for Cake, perhaps not the mere presence of the delightful little musical trinkets and odds-and-ends but, rather, just where to keep them all in a relatively crowded house. Take for example "Long Time," which sounds a lot like The Beatles' "All I've Got to Do" (for "a lot" read: "exactly"). No matter how many zany synths and sound effects the boys toss into the mix, one can't help but lose interest after its halfway point, because the song ceases to develop.

Conversely, songs like "Got to Move"–it doesn't– and "What's Now is Now" are intolerably boring and leave the listener wanting for the junk heaps and roving (somehow) enthusiastically desultory instrumental passages. One more issue must be addressed: John McCrea has absolutely no voice, it isn't even a bad one, and it is sometimes unpleasant to listen to, especially when he braves the higher registers. Other highlights include the weirdo instrumental, "Teenage Pregnancy" (despite the aforementioned awful piano playing) and, of course, the only logical choice for a single, the '70s roots rock-ish "Sick of You."