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[ the sea and cake ]
for three years and three albums, Chicago's the Sea and Cake played stoned spies in the house of soul, lazily distending funk guitar figures, frolicking about within sinuous rhythms, stumbling onto irresistible hooks and surprising themselves into giddy white-boy grunts. Given singer Sam Prekop's wiggly vocals, they came off like Pavement's Stephen Malkmus fronting Haircut 100, as produced by some effects-happy prankster. Indeed, all the group's releases were recorded and mixed by John McEntire of out-rock combo Tortoise who happens to be the Sea and Cake's drummer. The Tortoise connection may explain the, um, sea change in musical approach represented by "The Fawn." This new version of the Sea and Cake has jilted New Wave bounce and tickle for a more subdued, almost atmospheric groove. Like the color and animal of the title, these songs are unassuming, melodically shy, nearly monochromatic. The arrangements rein in Prekop's voice and Archer Prewitt's silky jazz guitar until they become mere percussive presences. Prekop can sing -- a snotty tenor, he does languorous falsetto -- but here he often perches on a single brown note or two, testing the simple taste, as if unmoved to soar. Snakes of synthesized sound wriggle across the album, fat and burpy where at most they used to play ethereal backdrop. Cello, piano, organ, flute, drums and drum machine take up bits of melody in turn, although if any one instrument carries the tune, it's Eric Claridge's flexible bass (and that's a definite Tortoise influence). Although the songs have parts that might be called verses and choruses, these are less songs than weavings: lengths of nubby, earth-colored linen snapping in a blue breeze. Apparently, this effect arose from a change in recording technique: Rather
than knock off live takes and a couple overdubs in a week or two, as the Sea
and Cake did with their last release, "The Biz," the tracks on "The Fawn" were
built, element by element, over a month. Whether the experiment is successful
or not depends on the listener's tolerance for attenuated tone poems. With
time and patience, "The Fawn" opens up to offer not a few distinct if
fleeting delights: the winsome dub stylings of "Sporting Life"; the rattletrap swing of "The Argument"; the slow unfolding of sunrise in "Black Tree in
the Bee Yard." "The Fawn's" songs brush past like small, quiet emotions; and
that is both their strength and their weakness.
--Terri Sutton Terri Sutton is a Minneapolis writer whose work has appeared in Spin, the Village Voice and the Minneapolis City Pages. |
