The Sea and Cake
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The sound of the opening track, “Up on Crutches,” isn’t much different from what I think of as basic Sea and Cake: genteel and gently funky, with front man Sam Prekop singing breathily about something I can’t quite sort out. The differences in texture are subtle–fewer obvious overdubs, less studio fussiness, more reliance on the band’s customary stage instrumentation (guitars, bass, and drums, as opposed to synths or programmed percussion). The dramatic changes on Everybody are in the structures and gestures that make up the songs: for the first time, they make generous use of traditional rock tropes. “Up on Crutches” begins with a bit of tension, a pleasant dissonance between the instruments and the vocals–a technique the Sea and Cake has toyed with before–and then halfway through, the chords resolve and the group executes a classic major-key pop progression. Any other band would’ve used that moment to blow the song up into a giant catharsis, but Prekop and company barely adjust their volume, allowing the music to bloom naturally and elegantly. Their willingness to hold back and let the music flow around them makes the moment profoundly satisfying, despite the absence of fireworks–and Everybody is full of moments like that.
Prekop is just as chill in person as you’d imagine from his singing. He’s 42, but the 20 years he’s spent in the relative sanctuary of the indie-rock scene have allowed him to grow older without becoming too much of an adult. When he talks about the creative process that led to Everybody, he’s simultaneously articulate and spacey, which makes him sound very much like the art student he was in 1985, when he started his first band, Shrimp Boat. “In general, the consensus seems that it’s not really a rock record, but it’s one that only the Sea and Cake would make,” he says.
The tune I quoted, “Exact to Me,” is the least rock-sounding thing on the new album, with a cyclical tension-release structure instead of a single resolution, but it’s also probably my favorite. The guitars are in full highlife mode, showering Eric Claridge’s scrambling bass line and McEntire’s subtle but amazingly expressive drumming with little flurries of syncopated melody, and Prekop plays the uptight midwestern white dude, like a more mellow David Byrne, singing in as clipped and forceful a style as he seems capable of. (Which is still pretty gentle compared to everyone this side of James Blunt.) Two songs later, though, the band gets back to pop basics with the pleasantly bouncy “Introducing,” which could pass for a cover of an obscure track by Tommy James & the Shondells.
