The Sea and Cake- One Bedroom

 Album titles can serve many purposes, including no purpose at all. Some bands barely seem to try at all with titles while others seem to be playing a meta game with their fans to see if they get the reference or intent behind it. Among album title tropes, I tend to be simultaneously the most and least interested in self-titled ones. I say least because it’s…merely the band’s name, and nothing more. Not much to discuss or interpret there. Yet in saying they’re “merely” the band’s name, this is both true and false, because if it’s not their debut album, a band using an eponymous title is often communicating something to their audience. This is why I had just said it’s also the most interesting trope to me.

While we’ll always know it as The White Album, the Beatles seemingly intended it to be self-titled, so you’ll sometimes see it referred to as The Beatles. Now, of course the better known trope associated with The White Album is a band doing a double album to stretch out and do a wider variety of music than normal. At least, when I hear people say a record is a band’s “White Album” I take it to mean that. Yet there’s another trope to the phenomenon of a self-titled album arriving several years into a band’s history, and that’s coming at a point in the band’s career when they’re changing their sound, changing members significantly, or otherwise trying to say “this is who we are as a band. It’s not a concept album or a tone piece or about a certain topic. It’s us.”

I bring all this up to say, despite it neither being a double album nor self-titled, One Bedroom by The Sea and Cake has often felt like it should be self-titled. It’s always been amongst my least favorite records by them, though I’ve come to appreciate (slightly) more its odds-and-sods approach to song variety. I mean, ‘Sound & Vision’ is the one cover, ever, the band has released, and it not only ends the album but it’s a lighthearted and fun moment for a band who, despite being always labelled as mellow/chill/relaxing/airy, have ironically never really felt FUN on any other track they’ve made. The rest of the album adds to this mixed feeling, with tracks either being standouts that are career highs—‘Mr. F’ has a circular chorus that sticks in the memory, and the lengthy jammy intro of ‘Four Corners’ that opens the record is a classic Sea and Cake groove—or they’re missteps that water the album down with what should have been b-sides. In particular the middle of One Bedroom always sags for me, and despite this album being just under 40 minutes it has that same issue Stereolab’s Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night does where it’s not a bad album by any means, there’s just a couple too many songs and the pacing is fitful. Which gets me to thinking this might have been a better EP than an album.

Given that this record followed Oui after 3 years, and their next record wouldn’t come out for another 4, it’s strange that One Bedroom feels so undercooked and rushed. It’s one of those releases I’ve always wanted to take a crack at changing the track order to see if I can make it either flow better or be more enjoyable. As a result of all of this the record is one that almost punishes close listening; I’m sure you might know what I mean when I say, not in an ambient music kind of way, but certain albums are more agreeable as background noise to another activity instead of listening intently to it. I’ve gone for walks or sat on the porch drinking beer to Oui and it is brilliant and rewards such close listening. One Bedroom, as its name suggests, always sounded best to me when I was doing homework in my bedroom when I was in school or otherwise focused on something else (reading, videogames, petting cats, etc).

Still, let’s consider the actual work. What One Bedroom reminds me of is when you buy a variety pack of beer or chips or something, and you get to the end of the pack and your least favorite things are the only ones left. “Well, I don’t hate this chocolate stout, but I don’t love it…” you think to yourself. That’s One Bedroom: the least good thing in a group of superior things. If Runner is the album for driving through a city, and Oui is for Summer afternoons with the windows open and a nice breeze going, then One Bedroom is for doing homework, certainly literally as I said before, but perhaps figuratively as you separate the wheat from the chaff in its tracklisting.

On a final note, I don’t give out scores for my reviews anymore, though in this case because my feelings about One Bedroom are difficult to qualify, it may help to quantify them with a number. In the distant past I used a 5 star rating system for my reviews and it always seemed to be the sticking point with the few people who would comment on this blog, so eventually I dropped it entirely, mostly because it seemed unnecessary in the age of streaming and nearly-limitless access to music. By which I mean, you can go listen to this album in multiple places before you consider “spending money” on it, so giving Consumer Reports style ratings feels asinine. Yet One Bedroom sort of perfectly encapsulates what I think of as a 3 star out of 5 album. It is absolutely a 3 out of 5 record, though don’t take this as based on the fact I described the album much earlier in this review as “odds-and-sods.” Not every album that has a handful of weak tracks is automatically either a 3, or even couldn’t achieve a 5. No, One Bedroom would earn this rating because I think fans of the band would probably enjoy this, while at the same time, I would never tell a newcomer to start here.

 

30 For 30: The Sea and Cake

I turn 30 on February 18th. I want to celebrate this, and get myself back into writing, by spending a few weeks rambling about the 30 things that have meant the most to me over the years. These will be from music, movies, books, videogames, and maybe even art and other things for good measure. I feel like my life has been much more about the things I've experienced than it has the people I've known or the places I've traveled to, and these 30 things have helped to make my 30 years more than worth all the innumerable bad things. Expect heartfelt over-sharing and overly analytical explanations galore! In part 3, learn about why I love the band The Sea and Cake and give a listen to four of my favorite songs by them.

In the first entry for this series, I wrote about how it felt to meet other people who shared my obsession with a cult-like object. Whereas with EarthBound I was able to talk about the game with other people in real life and online, and it made me feel part of something greater than myself, I've never had similar experiences with The Sea and Cake. I believe they will always be mine and mine alone. Of course the band has other fans, and I did see them at a music festival in the Summer of 2007 in the midst of a sizable crowd, but I've never had a conversation with anyone who has heard of them, online or otherwise. Even when I introduce others to the band, they don't end up sharing my enthusiasm.


Calling The Sea and Cake obscure would be inaccurate; marginal, perhaps, is a better word. In a hypothetical book that encompasses all of music history, they would be in the margin somewhere. A footnote might be more appropriate, seeing as how footnotes are the cornerstone of the Chicago style of citation and The Sea and Cake are one of the preeminent Chicago bands of the past 20 years. But I digress. I think the reason this band is so ignored is that they don't provoke a strong reaction. To a new listener, all of their albums kind of sound the same and cruise by with only the occasional bumps in the road. Words like mellow, breezy, Summery, jazzy, and smooth always come up when I describe them to people, and singer Sam Prekop's upper register vocals are characterized by an airy, sighing, and slightly nasal sound. Indeed, he and The Sea and Cake have such a distinctive, instantly recognizable sound that this is part of the reason it can be difficult for new listeners to distinguish between albums, let alone songs.


To me, though, each album is a variation on an idea. This is a band where the more you dig into their discography, the more you notice subtle details and shifting instrumentation. Even without considering what they sound like, this explains why The Sea and Cake are often labelled as being jazzy or post-jazz. Much like a traditional jazz band, their sound and song structures are pretty much codified, but a truly skilled group of musicians can wring a lot of variety by working from the same set of blueprints again and again.


If The Sea and Cake don't mean much to me on an emotional level—I don't “relate” to their lyrics, for instance, in the way I do Nick Drake or The National—then I can relate to them on a visceral level. Their music is all about the feel: a relaxed atmosphere akin to slight Summer winds, or other times, the slow momentum of being on a train in a city. I can't help but nod my head or slow down my normally racing thoughts when I listen to The Sea and Cake. They are as essential to me as afternoon tea or yoga are for other people, transcending a mere “band I really love” status to something vital. Call it vitamin Sea...and Cake.


I refuse to apologize for this bad joke.


To complete this entry in the 30 For 30 series, I had planned to talk about 30 songs by the band that I love the most. But since this would be maddeningly long, I'll trim it down to four.




'Parasol' (Nassau, 1995)


From the band's second album, 'Parasol' represents the early sound of the band quite well. It's more dense than later work, and Sam Prekop's vocals haven't yet gotten to the point where he sighs out every line as if relaxed in a swaying hammock near a tropical beach. However, I love the way this song progresses, adding in sounds until it's downright claustrophobic by The Sea and Cake standards. This gives way to string section enhanced bridges where Prekop repeats the song's title while sounding like someone exhaling a cloud of smoke on a hotel balcony during a long vacation.





'The Argument' (The Fawn, 1997)


In some ways this is the quintessential The Sea and Cake song, the one most capable of functioning as a litmus test for someone to determine if they'd love this band or not. It has some of everything they've done over the years and demonstrates their standard way of structuring songs, which is to establish a mellow groove for a minute or two before the vocals and/or main section kicks in. This is another thing that gives the band its jazzy reputation, since this kind of structure is often how jazz songs work: a few minutes of playing around until the main 'theme' or melody is stated. But I digress. 'The Argument' is from The Fawn, the album that added electronic flourishes to The Sea and Cake's repertoire. Unlike other bands at the time who went electro, though, this is a band who use the sound of synthesizers, drum machines, samples, and sequencers to naturally complement their sound. With later records the divide between the acoustic/electric and electronic elements would become more pronounced and up-front, with songs often focusing on one or the other. With The Fawn and especially 2000's Oui, they work together as a magical synthesis that makes The Sea and Cake difficult to define as belonging to rock, jazz, or electronic music.





'Exact To Me' (Everybody, 2007)


It's hard to bill The Sea and Cake albums as being about this or that thing, because there's always a track or two that don't fit neatly into claims like “it's their rock album” or “it's their electronic album.” Everybody came after a four year break and was supposed to be their guitar focused record, sporting a more muscular sound with no overdubs. Indeed, this does apply to most of the album, with the guitars having more distortion than usual and the low-end sounding more full-bodied. But then there's 'Exact To Me', with its exotic rhythms and flamenco-esque guitar flourishes. As a whole Everybody is one of my favorites by The Sea and Cake because a song like this works, somehow, despite its placement on the album, surrounded as it is by two mellow tracks that are perfectly suited for that period in the late afternoon when you're yawning enough to want to take a nap but you end up smoking a cigarette or making some tea instead.





'The Invitations' (Runner, 2012)



Regarding criticism that every song sounds the same: The Sea and Cake's consistency is one of the things that draws me to them but the times when they throw their usual game plan out the window are often my favorite tracks from their respective albums. The cover of 'Sound & Vision' by David Bowie from One Bedroom is downright fun and has wonderfully cheesy 80s keyboard sounds. The instrumental 'Black Tree In The Bee Yard' from The Fawn feels like it wandered in from a Tortoise album (which makes sense, as The Sea and Cake's drummer John McEntire is in both bands). 'The Invitations', meanwhile, starts off floating on a bed of vintage synthesizer washes before samples of schoolchildren appear through the haze, recalling Boards Of Canada's first two albums. Soon a driving beat kicks in, and the remaining two minutes of the song are given to an extended instrumental with danceable beats, the band's patented intertwining guitars, and twirling keyboard loops.

Real Estate- Days

Early October this year was an Indian Summer, as it were, in my part of Ohio. This means that in the morning it was quite brisk and you needed a medium-thickness jacket; when you got off work, the weather was in the 70s and the sunshine, so very good feeling, seemed like Mother Nature was winking at you. It was one of those week or so periods of time where I sat in an old leather chair by my open window, smoking clove cigars, slowly getting drunk on cheap sangria, and beginning to read something I instantly knew I was going to adore (in this case, The Sandman). The cherry on top of this perfect weather and week or so kind-of-a-bender was first hearing an album like Days and falling in love with a band like Real Estate.

Looking back at my review of the band's self-titled debut, I summed up my feelings thusly: “Real Estate is the sort of enjoyable, low stakes indie album with a refreshing lack of pretense or artifice that will never win awards or change the world. Impossible to hate, difficult to fully love, Real Estate is a good little album, endlessly playable but only rarely remarkable.” On first listen, this also summarized my feelings toward the band's new record, Days. I was ready to write my four star review and say the band were even closer to making their masterpiece. “Maybe next time, fellas,” I thought, “now let's go see how the new album by The Field turned out...” However, something funny happened on a recent warm October night: I fell in love with Real Estate.

In the review quoted above, I noted a similarity between Real Estate and The Sea and Cake. This feels more pronounced on Days because the band are drifting further from their psychedelic/surf-rock leaning debut into straight up groove-rock built around the bright, shimmering interplay of Real Estate's guitarists. To put it another way, Real Estate's debut sounds best in Spring and Summer; Days will still sound groovy, mellow, and amazing when Fall finally settles in, and on through Winter. Indeed, Real Estate are more or less turning out to be the heir apparent to The Sea and Cake, minus some of the jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythmic influences of that veteran Chicago band but adding a hypnotic interplay between the guitarists. It's like Television if Television had had two amazing rhythm guitarists instead of two amazing lead guitarists.

As Days is the kind of record which starts pretty good and gets better as it goes, you can bet it also reaches its natural peak with the elongated ending of 'All The Same', hinting at a jammier side of the band than is apparent on their albums or, judging by a live bootleg from 2010 I recently heard, their concerts. One of the album's best songs, 'Wonder Years', is a jangle-pop gem possessing a title which nods to the somehow-80s-evoking scene the band has sometimes been lumped in with. If Real Estate haven't exactly won the attention and sales of better known somehow-80s-evoking acts like Washed Out, Best Coast, or Kurt Vile, Days shows that they have still outstripped them all in terms of nailing down a unique and (seemingly) definitive sound. Call it “coming into their own.” Call it “producing their first great record” or whatever else. No matter the label, it's still the sound of a band realizing their potential.

Days is such a confident and endlessly enjoyable record that one hopes the band don't stray too far from it for awhile. At first, it may come off as lightweight and samey-sounding until, on further spins, something suddenly clicks and you find yourself listening to it over and over for a week straight. These are songs which start off “pretty good” and soon bloom into addictive little tunes you can't get enough of. “Lightweight” it may be...but so are summer shandies and featherweight boxers. But I digress. Days is one of the year's most unassuming and greatest successes. Highly recommended.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

The Sea And Cake- Oui

Even for a band with a streak of consistency, Oui has always felt like the most special and outstanding of all of The Sea and Cake's releases. The elements of their sound and songwriting were well in place by the time of its release The group's 90s output established their mellow, jazzy, and ethnic-tinged music before increasing the electronic influences with 1997's The Fawn. After a three year break, they returned in 2000 with this album, which expertly fuses the earlier, more guitar-heavy-and-jazzy vibe and their newer electronic focus. But it's more than that. It's also the songwriting, the pacing, and the flow that lends Oui a perfect shine.

It's impossible to be stressed out or unhappy while listening to The Sea and Cake. Their's is a style with no tension, angst, or conflict; even at its most engaging, energetic, and propulsive, there's an easy going vibe that wrangles the music into a smooth breeze instead of an unpleasant gust. Yet Oui is their most laid back and relaxing album of all. Sure, all of their stuff has a Spring and Summer feel to it, but Oui practically demands you be reclined, if not entirely vertical, and for the weather, at a bare minimum, to be in the mid 60s and at least partially sunny.

The album may start with the one-two punch of 'Afternoon Speaker' and 'All The Photos', arguably the strongest opening salvo of a The Sea and Cake album ever, but the lengthy third track 'You Beautiful Bastard' soon takes things down a notch. An instrumental, its patient guitar interplay and steady-as-she-goes cymbals bring to mind laying on a raft at the beach or napping in a hammock. The ebb and flow of the volume levels on 'The Colony Room', from Sam Prekop's mellow “dum de dum, duh duh dum” wordless scat-like singing to the swells of guitar, drums, and organ, would be enough to seal it as one of the band's high points, but then they go ahead and throw in a tasteful horns-and-orchestra interjection at the 2:20 mark. I would be remiss not to mention the intricately played 'I Missed The Glance', which grooves along nicely in the band's trademark breezy-and-jazzy-with-touches-of-electronics style before transforming roughly halfway through for a more minimalist and cinematic coda.

For an album I've come to regard as so stellar, I wish I had a lot more to say about Oui. But by its very easy going, relaxing nature, it resists lengthy analysis and deep critical machinations. It's just The Sea and Cake's best album; there's no weak or forgettable songs and it flows so well you barely notice it's over when it is. That's as good as I can do; trying to burrow deeper would be like trying to explain why I love laying on my couch on Sunday afternoons, feeling the breeze coming from the windows, occasionally getting up to sip a Cherry Coke (on ice, naturally), and not having a care in the world.Oui is one of those unassuming masterpieces that never makes lists from websites and magazines, but will hit the spot in the way no other album can when you're in the right mood and the weather is just peachy.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

The Sea And Cake: Everybody

Let's visualize something together. Imagine yourself back as a child. You're on summer vacation. It's the afternoon and you find yourself inside. Maybe you're tired from playing in the morning or you're waiting for your parents to make lunch. The A/C is on and for whatever reason you lay on the floor and stare out the window, up at that endless expanse of blue with a few clouds marring it. You can feel a little air from the nearest floor vent, cold and dry on your skin. You start to hum something pleasant to yourself.

This is what listening to The Sea And Cake is like. I gave you a nice visual image to experience, but there really isn't anything remarkable about it, is there?? I probably did something like that a few dozen times as a kid but I never think about it or bring it up to anyone. They aren't bad memories, obviously, but they aren't amazing experiences or magical. This, too, is what listening to The Sea And Cake is like. They don't make bad music by any definition but it isn't amazing or magical. The Sea And Cake are, at least in my book, two paradoxes in one:

1) They've released eight albums yet none of them--with the exception of Oui--are essential; at the same time, all eight are good and contain at least a few songs that fans won't want to miss.

2) Their sound remains almost entirely the same from album to album yet each one has its own character and feel.

Whenever I get around to listening to each The Sea And Cake album, I come to the same conclusion: this album is pretty good; it's got some awesome songs yet it doesn't add up to anything that makes me want to write needlessly long reviews. Consistency, then, is the band's greatest strength and greatest weakness. You can pretty much pick up any of their releases and get a good idea of what all the rest of them will sound like. Yet like a jazz band, The Sea And Cake employ the same instruments and 'sound' on each album but the results and atmosphere are different enough that fans will undoubtedly prefer one over all the rest. All the while, to the average listener, it's the same thing again and again.

The Sea And Cake have made a career out of what can best be described as "easy listening indie pop/rock with touches of jazz and electronic music." Those two clean, crystalline guitars, melodic but almost imperceptible bass, propulsive but only slightly funky percussion, and a smooth-and-warm-but-a-bit-nasally-voice. Plus some keyboards or drum machines every so often. There are no true peaks and valleys or jagged edges in The Sea And Cake's music. The songs operate under two headings, either "relaxing and nocturnal" or "breezy and sunny." Also, their music doesn't sound quite right when listened to in the Fall or Winter. It's got an effervescent Spring/Summer tone to it that I never pick up on until it is the Spring/Summer and I listen to them more than usual.

Oui is the only The Sea And Cake album that casual fans will need, but I still find something oddly compelling about their other albums such as Everybody. It's mostly the "I want more of a good thing" notion, I suppose; if My Bloody Valentine had gone on to produce 6 more things that barely toyed with the Loveless formula, I don't know that I would have complained. Partially, though, I think Everybody and its ilk are just easy listening in the literal, non-pejorative sense. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're like vacations or breaks from other music, because I've never thought of music as something I need a vacation from, but still. There's an ease and immediacy to The Sea And Cake's albums that is taken for granted.

When I burned a CD copy of Everybody, the songs somehow got jumbled up so that 'Introducing' was the first song. I didn't notice my mistake for almost twoo weeks. That kind of thing would be damning about another album--the order of the songs should always be meaningful, right?? Right!!--but it demonstrates the laid back-ness of The Sea And Cake. I want to have stronger reactions to their music, even if they're negative reactions. As it is, I feel ambivalent. Well, it's ambivalent in a positive way. Unless you really despise the idea of a band standing still but remaining consistently good, you'll never end up in arguments about The Sea & Cake's discography. It just sort of is there, waiting for you to get bored in a record store someday and think to yourself, "maybe I'll finally get around to one of The Sea And Cake's albums...."

(An Hour Or So Later, After Returning Home And Listening To It)

"Hey, that was alright, I guess. It sure is a nice day outside. Wonder if it'll rain tomorrow?"

While putting the CD back in the case: "Wonder when the next Tortoise album is coming out...."