Album: Comfort Eagle Release Date: 7/24/2001 Length: 36:52 Label: Sony/Columbia Rating: 6.4 |
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| Track Listing | |
| 1. Opera Singer (4:06) | |
| 2. Meanwhile, Rick James... (3:57) | |
3. Shadow Stabbing (3:07)  |
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| 4. Short Skirt/Long Jacket (3:24) | |
| 5. Commissioning A Symphony In C (2:59) | |
| 6. Arco Arena (1:31) | |
7. Comfort Eagle (3:40)  |
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| 8. Long Line of Cars (3:23) |
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| 9. Love You Madly (3:57) | |
| 10. Pretty Pink Ribbon (3:08) | |
| 11. World of Two (3:40) |
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| Review | |
| California is a strange place. By all known accounts, it is due to sink into the ocean before the current crop of Olympic figure skaters hit menopause, and many have referred to it as merely a large desert that has been made livable by man. As fake and unforgiving as California may be, the music scene is anything but. Exhibit A? Cake. | |
| Cake isn't just some silly California rock group, though. This southern California band could be as well known for it's political awareness as it is for its music, as they have taken to posting articles relating to environmental safety on their website, www.cakemusic.com. This is where the wonderful paradox of Cake truly begins to take hold. | |
| The band is clearly not a bunch of air-headed west coasters, but they're not exactly a group of tree-huggers, either. These are men who like unique rock music. The music itself does have some west coast influence on it, as the band has featured trumpeters since their inception, but it is not the quick ska trumpets that California is so accustomed to using as it's trademark sound. Rather, these are slow drawn out lounge horns that sooth and scream all at the same time. | |
| Luckily, Cake isn't just resting on their laurels happy to be the unique band that everyone knows they are. Their sound has evolved quite a bit throughout their four-disc career while retaining the unique sound that has made them a fan favorite for some time. The early releases, Motorcade Of Generosity (1994) and Fashion Nugget (1996) were heartfelt emotional discs about breaking up and getting back together and everything else in between. The third album, Prolonging The Magic, was more or less a bridging of the gap between the Cake of earlier times and the Cake on Comfort Eagle. "Prolonging" features less love songs and begins to delve into the clever story telling that Cake has nearly perfected on Comfort Eagle. Songs like "Cool Blue Reason" on Prolonging The Magic foreshadowed titles like "Commissioning A Symphony In C." In fact, Comfort Eagle seems to be the album that finally moves Cake over to the professional songwriters guild. After all, it is harder to weave a tale out of nothing than it is to tell of lost love. | |
| Long-time Cake fans worried that the band's slight change of style has left them in the dust need not fear, however. There is one common thread uniting all of the Cake albums, Comfort Eagle included. The thread being that Comfort Eagle contains the obligatory auto asphyxiation that has been prevalent in every album the band has released. This time the tune is "Long Line Of Cars" a tale really not about cars at all. But then again, "The Distance" and "Satan Is My Motor" weren't really about motor vehicles either, were they? | |
| Yet, if I'm gushing all about how unique and creative Cake is, and they surely are, why is the score merely a 6.4? If a five is average, and for all intents and purposes, the fives I hand out will be the average score, then this album is slightly above average. It will not change the way you think about music. And thinking about the meaning behind the lyrics probably won't lead you to a higher spiritual plane, but Cake's Comfort Eagle is great for what it is, a simple rock album from a band that enjoys what they do. As many bands have said, not everyone can be Radiohead. Sometimes, not everyone needs to be. | |
| Rating: 6.4 | |
| - Dan Kricke |
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