The Good: Great lyrics, Decent musical sound, Creative, Vocals are fine
The Bad: Many of the songs sound similar, SHORT!
The Basics: Something different, even if it is short and the songs sound like one another, Comfort Eagle is articulate, funny and enjoyable.
My local library, gotta love it, recently had a donation of three or four boxes worth of compact discs and my partner descended upon the sale - fifty cents each! - to get gifts and find obscure music from her childhood which was now falling at her feet like musical manna from heaven. After going through the four discs she bought, there is only one which she and I are not regretting she spent the fifty cents on. That album is Cake's Comfort Eagle.
Before listening to this album, my only familiarity with Cake was from the film Waitress (reviewed here!) and having heard their most mainstream hit "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" several times back when radio stations used to play it. And I like Comfort Eagle. I truly do like it. In fact, that might be why I am so eager to write what I don't like about the album. First, it is short, dreadfully short. At 36:53, this is a disappointingly poor use of the c.d. medium. I liked what I heard and I wanted to hear more! I have c.d. singles which have longer runtime than this eleven-song c.d.!
The second real problem with Comfort Eagle is that Cake is derivative of itself. You know how some bands have a distinctive sound that is different from everyone else in the market? Well, Cake is just like that: they are fresh, quirky and lead singer John McCrea sounds only like himself. The closest sound I've heard to Cake is from They Might Be Giants, in that group's early years. So, Cake is a pop-rock band that sounds only like itself. Unfortunately, some of the songs on Comfort Eagle sound like one another. "Meanwhile, Rick James" and "Shadow Stabbing" are both mellow up-tempo in similar ways and the melodies to "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" and Comfort Eagle (the song) are almost identical.
That said, my rating Comfort Eagle highly was not a lapse in my high standards as a reviewer. Instead, it is an acknowledgment that this album sounds fresh after almost a decade and that I've had this playing the entire day - after several days of playing it - and I'm not at all sick of it. It has been a long time since an album did that for me.
Comfort Eagle is very much the musical vision of the group Cake. All eleven of the songs were written or co-written by McCrea and he provides all of the lead vocals on the album. As well, the group plays all their own instruments and Cake is credited as the producer of the album. This is the album they intended to release.
And the album is fun. The songs tend to be about creating art ("Commissioning A Symphony In C," "Shadow Stabbing"), romance ("Love You Madly," "World Of Two") or simple dreaming ("Short Skirt/Long Jacket"). McCrea has a strong sense of politics, which is rare in a pop-rock singer (very common the folk music I listen to, though). Concepts that are more risque come through in the title track, which sounds like a benign attack on surfer or popular culture, but actually rings more true as a subtle attack on organized religion and cults.
What separates Cake and Comfort Eagle from many other pop-rock bands on the radio is the musical richness of the songs. On this album, there is an instrumental track ("Arco Arena") and the band regularly employs trumpets, multiple keyboards and multiple basses in addition to programming loops and standard guitars and percussion. The songs are almost homogeneously energetic in their instrumentation and this is definitely an album to groove to. I swear, it's a hazard to have in the car with my partner and I, as we will start dancing whenever "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" or “Comfort Eagle” comes on. This is head-bobbing good.
The vocals of James McCrea are simple and direct throughout the album. At times, McCrea does not sing so much as speak his poetry with a musical background. But when he does sing, he has a decent tenor voice which effectively goes into the lower ranges on songs like "Long Line Of Cars" in order to enhance the mood. Smartly, though, McCrea enunciates every line and all of the lyrics are easily understood simply by listening to the songs. McCrea is articulate and he produces the songs so he can be heard.
But sometimes what McCrea and Cake have to say is just confusing or weird and Comfort Eagle is pleasantly quirky as a result. Long before the David Chapelle-induced obsession with Rick James, Cake was singing "We were swimming your kidney, / Kidney shaped pool / Scratching at the bottom / For another clue, yeah / Fon, Jo and Tootsie / Are out on a wire / Less tooth junkies / All full of desire / Meanwhile Rick James takes her nude / And there's nothing I can do" ("Meanwhile, Rick James..."). I'm not sure exactly what it means (well, I know what it means, but what Rick James has to do with the mystery in the song is a mystery to me), but Cake makes it sound good. They sometimes place poetry before comprehension.
That is not always the case, though. Instead, they sometimes make brilliant music out of history lessons, as they do with "Commissioning A Symphony In C." A tribute to Wagner's "Symphony In C," the song has lines like "So you'll be an Austrian Nobleman / Commissioning a symphony in C / Which defies all earthly descriptions / You'll be Commissioning a symphony in C / With money you squeeze from the peasants / To your nephew you can give it as a present / This magnificent symphony in C . . . Completely filling the palace concert hall / It's warm and golden like an oven that's wide open / It has a melody both happy and sad / Built on Victoria's young triads" ("Commissioning A Symphony In C"). Cake makes it work!
Fortunately, the entire album is not completely esoteric. There is even a love song. Cake makes love sound fresh and fun with "Love You Madly's" lines "I don't want to think about it / I don't want to talk about it / When I kiss your lips / I want to sink down to the bottom / Of the sea." They can be emotive. Still, they seem to work better with irony, which "Pretty Pink Ribbon" has in spades.
Either way, Comfort Eagle is the new thing you haven't heard before . . . with songs that sound annoyingly like one another. That said, it is still worth it and if there were ever a deluxe version with twice as much music on it, that would be something I'd pay more than fifty cents for!
The best song is “Comfort Eagle,” the low point might well be "World Of Two," though it is not a bad song by any measure!
For other similar groups or albums, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Uninvited - The Uninvited
Then: The Early Years - They Might Be Giants
Good News For People Who Like Bad News - Modest Mouse
7.5/10
For other music reviews, be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the album and singles I have reviewed.
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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