Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5
After an almost seven-year wait, the alternativest alt-rock Sacramento boys are back with their sixth album, this one proudly released on their own independent label. It's a bit of a letdown. But not entirely. Cake has always had the uncanny ability to take something that would otherwise be cheesy or silly and make it cool. They do it here to some degree, but mostly they seem to be trying too hard instead of having fun. It's not bad, just not great.
The muddy first track, "Federal Funding," is a dud. But it opens the door to an album that is plenty entertaining, and at times Cake's darkest, from the ghostly pop-y "Long Time" to the whimsical "Italian Guy." Like their other albums, Showroom is a fairly eclectic mix of engaging, positively '90s rock songs ["Mustache Man (Wasted)" is vaguely reminiscent of "Short Skirt/Long Jacket"] and country/blues ones like "Got To Move" and "Bound Away," both of which are fine songs, but the only way they approach the heartbreaking sentimentality of previous Cake songs like "Mexico" is in how they make us want to go back and listen to the older songs.
Band leader John McCrea anticipated that the album would be very different from their previous LPs. The only track that really diverges much from their old style is the heavy instrumental interlude "Teenage Pregnancy." For the most part, these guys are still the same as they were ten years ago. Same trumpets, same vibraslap, same McCrea talk-singing, same steel guitar, same whistling keyboards. Perhaps as sort of a representation of the whole album, the solemn track "The Winter" is like a faint, nostalgic echo of their previous greats. Showroom of Compassion is by no means a masterpiece. But it reminds us that Cake has had some in the past.
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