Flipping This Quarter

Release Date: 24 July 2001 (Columbia)
Date I Got: 27 September 2007
Best Track: Short Skirt, Long Jacket
Other Notable Tracks: Shadow Stabbing, Commissioning a Symphony in C, Long Line of Cars

I can’t be sure, but I think this is the first album I ever "professionally" reviewed. I had friends throughout college that held editor positions on the campus newspaper, so I wrote a few music reviews and a few movie reviews and, later, op-eds about campus life. If you think my music writing is insufferable and long-winded and whatever else, you should see those op-eds that no one read. (Those that I know did, though, liked or at least respected it. Alas.)

So this, I think, was the first music review I did. I have no idea what I said, but I think I didn’t care for it all that much, finding it mostly mediocre. Which is essentially how I feel about it now.

In a lot of respects it is better than Fashion Nugget. The lyrics are not as memorable, though they are not as determinedly ironic, so I’m okay with it. The music is stronger overall, but not as good as on The Distance. Musically, Commissioning a Symphony in C is the best track, creating a nice little chord progression with some staccato strumming. The words leave a lot to be desired.

Long Line of Cars is this album’s "Stickshifts": another song that has the potential to actually say something worthwhile, but falls short.

But Cake lives and dies by the catchiness of their tunes. Consider the first single: Short Skirt, Long Jacket –  easily the catchiest of the bunch. It’s a simple song in which the singer tells us the traits he desires in women, beginning many of the lines with "I want a girl with…" I love this rhetorical device; it’s an effective formulation that allows self-containment and easy internal comparisons within the song which build on all the other comparisons. In other words: by writing the song this way we can easily contrast the different traits he wants to gain some complexity and insight into the human condition.

That said, it doesn’t fully work, but works well enough. Additionally, it’s hard to argue with his perfect woman. Really, I think it’s a song about making the transition from "high-school girlfriend" to "real-life girlfriend;" having a relationship that is reflective of a growth in, well, maturity. There’s also, I think, an undercurrent of ruthlessness which, if you sort of maybe have a crush on the Lady Macbeth types, you understand. Now I’ve said too much.

Check out the video (linked below): like much of Cake’s music, I like the idea, but it doesn’t completely succeed.

Get a second opinion!
[official] [allmusic]
[Video - Short Skirt, Long Jacket]

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BONUS COVERAGE!!! Sheep Go to Heaven

Prolonging the Magic came out in between this album and Fashion Nugget. I’m surprised I don’t hav it, as it contains easily my favorite Cake song: Sheep Go To Heaven.

The song came out when I was in high school, and that’s probably why I loved it: going to a high school in a very politically and religiously conservative area when you are neither makes…actually, it would take to long to recount why I hate my hometown so much (and I’m spending Christmas there! Yippee!) so I’m not going to try. Goats go to hell.

Nonetheless. I’m down with any indictment of conformity (given the appropriate context and actions, etc.) The video (linked below) puts a finer point on this despite its South Park-esque animation. It’s pretty great and includes a murderous rampage as an extension of existential angst (Camus? Camus?), dude being cast from Heaven for ill-timed jumping jacks, and a dog committing suicide. Best part, though, is the jury of his "peers" telling him to Go to Hell.

[Video - Sheep Go to Heaven]

Release Date: 17 September 1996 (Capricorn)
Date I Got: Summer 1999
Best Track: The Distance
Other Notable Tracks: Nugget, Stickshifts and Safteybelts

You know "The Distance" just as everyone knows "The Distance." It came out about the time I got into popular music, though I don’t have the memory of hearing it on the radio the way I do with other songs of those months. I liked the song well enough and eventually picked up the album used for cheap.

Although, I gotta say: listening to it again for the first time in a couple years, I’m at a loss as to why it got big. The insistent baseline and story of single-minded determination are good, but the song feels like it lacks a foundation. It is a novelty song.

And it would be on a novelty album, if the other tracks were catchy enough to be memorable. The songwriting isn’t strong enough to support the "cleverness." The two almost exceptions, not including "The Distance", are "Nugget" and "Stickshifts and Safetybelts."

The latter doesn’t fully succeed because it’s still too tongue-in-cheek, but it’s pretty decent lyrically and the jaunty guitar work doesn’t detract. In the hands of a better (by that I mean: more earnest) artist, it would take a trivial disconnect — lovers isolated in personal bucketseats — and make it into a lament on the barriers technology erects to discourage human bonding. I give points for trying.

"Nugget" is a different beast. The copious uses of "fuck" seem out of place on an album that is, more or less, kid friendly. Indeed, while I’d like to claim that I liked this song back in high school because of it’s funk-like rhythm, it’s really because the chorus is: "Shut the Fuck Up!" (I’m no better than you.) I think it’s aged better than the other tracks, partly because the universal and timeless sentiment, and partly because it makes no sense:

Heads of state who ride and wrangle
Who look at your face from more than one angle
Can cut you from their bloated budgets
Like sharpening knifes, two Chicken McNuggets
Shut the fuck up.

Get a second opinion!
[official] [allmusic]