The Sea & Cake
Everybody
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The Sea & Cake
Everybody
Thrill Jockey, 2007
RiYL: Tortoise, Tim Buckley, The Shins |
While the marvelous trio of albums with which The Sea and Cake introduced themselves to the world in 1994 and '95 were largely built around the dynamic interplay between Prewitt and Prekop's clean-channel guitar strumming, beginning with 1997's The Fawn the band set out in a divisive new stylistic direction. Drummer/keyboardist/engineer John McEntire began to play a much larger role in the arrangement and presentation of the songs, and Prewitt and bassist Eric Claridge were pushed out to the margins a bit. Isolated parts of Oui (2000) and One Bedroom (2003) hinted at the old interplay, but on the whole the shadow of McEntire's Tortoise-honed production expertise loomed large.
It's not that any of the The Sea and Cake's later records are bad, exactly. Quite the opposite. And all of the members had established with their previous groups -- Prekop and Claridge with Shrimp Boat, Prewitt with The Coctails, and McEntire with Gastr Del Sol -- a fearless desire to be moving the music ever forward. But there is a certain magic contained on the more spontaneous, live-band tracks of the early Sea and Cake albums (particularly the stone-cold classic Nassau, one of my favorite records by anyone ever) that the more austere mid-period stuff undeniably lacks.
Everybody almost entirely eschews the developments of the last ten years; it could be an immediate sequel to 1995's The Biz. Gone is the ProTools haze that enveloped just about every track from the post-Biz records. Returned in spades is the telekinetic charge of Prewitt's leads careening off of Prekop's idly strummed rhythm playing. "Middlenight" boasts a sturdy, almost rockabilly figure that gives the otherwise tissue-soft tune its needed edge. The precise jazzy wraparounds on "Exact to Me" bound perfectly off of Claridge's meandering bassline and McEntire's absurdly proficient polyrhythms. "Crossing Line" even employs a fuzzbox, although it's still as gentle as cotton candy. When electronics are indulged, like the four-square drum machine pattern on "Lightning" or McEntire's tasteful analog synth work throughout, they never for a moment threaten to steal the focus away from the guitarists, and the highly underrated Claridge is clearly audible for the first time since The Biz. What's surprising is that in limiting his role John McEntire actually increases his positive input to the record; his drumming is a constant marvel and the few embellishments he chooses to make benefit all the more from his overall restraint.
That said, you can't go home again. While there isn't a single song on Everybody that isn't likable, the album simply lacks the kind of memorable moments that made Nassau and The Biz so timeless, tunes like "The World Is Against You" or "Leeora" that send you running to the Internet to try and parse Prekop's ever-indecipherable lyrics or to your guitar to try and figure out those indelible chord patterns for yourself. "Left On," which begins as a long group jam then crossfades into an actual song for its last minute, comes closest, but it doesn't quite make it there. If you're a fan of The Sea and Cake you won't be disappointed by this album for a minute, but then again, the band has never really disappointed. They are as they always were -- one of indie rock's true jewels, and an absolute must-see if they find their way to your town on one of their infrequent tours.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.