Cake
Comfort Eagle
Sony/Columbia

Nothing sums up California's Central Valley like Cake. It's a twisted place. An hour outside of San Francisco and its direct suburbs to the east, it would be easy for travelers to wonder how they ended up in the middle of Oklahoma but where everyone has a superiority complex. Nowhere is that more the case than Sacramento, a humid little city that once rivaled Frisco as a Gold Rush launching point but whose only importance now is that it happens to be the state capital. Still, there's something charming about the place and the laid-back sorts who roam its streets, and Cake is certainly a product of its birthplace.

On Motorcade of Generosity and Fashion Nugget, you almost had to respect John McCrea sounding like he rolled out of bed after a long night of drinking and into the studio to record gems like "Jolene" and "Daria." In fact, while the music was seldom interesting — country mixed with a ska band's horns on Motorcade, lost horns but a '70s Skynyrd sound gained on Nugget — the witty, seemingly improvised lyrics and lazy singing make it perfect for baking any late afternoon in the sun with a six-pack of Miller Highlife, a couple of buddies and a few old green lawn chairs.

Such is, tragically, not the case with the group's new release, Comfort Eagle. It's not so much that the music has changed from earlier albums — a drum machine was added on "Opera Singer," for aesthetic reasons unknown — but that it sounds like the group is trying too hard to stay the same. When Motorcade was released in 1994, it seemed like the antidote to those really angry guys up in Seattle who might have been the same way but for too much coffee. Yeah, Cake had problems; no, they didn't have jobs but man, have a smoke and chill out a little. Seven years and four albums later, McCrea and gang are no longer the kids with nothing to do. The songs, however, try as best they can not to give that away. Even Frank Black isn't the same artist he was when Teenager of the Year was released.

Tracks like "Opera Singer" or "Commissioning A Symphony in C" commit the worst crime a songwriter or author can: write about what he or she doesn't know. Not only has Cake's music failed to progress in any substantial way, the songs sound strained for content. What does a Gen-X rocker from Sacramento know about Austrian symphony or Italian opera? What he read in an encyclopedia, it would seem.

Comfort Eagle is far from being an atrocity committed to plastic, though. Even if it sounds like Cake may have had a good night's sleep before arriving in the studio, McCrea still retains a cache of charisma from his previous albums that carries it through each listening. "Arco Arena," named for Sacramento's largest music venue, is a clever instrumental piece evocative of the metal bands the group must have seen play there in the '80s. But Cake, as a music group, seems to be trying to pull a Weezer without first having its own Pinkerton which, sadly, will make for an inevitable long, slow, terribly unexciting slide back to the wasteland from which the group emerged.

— Colin Ferm (colin@spudworks.com)