The one-of-a-kind Chicago quartet, The Sea and Cake, are back at it. After the release of their previous album, “Everybody” in May of 2007, they hit the road. After finishing their Australian tour in March of 2008, the band recorded—in only three months—their seventh full-length studio release Car Alarm.
The group is comprised of singer/guitarist Sam Prekop, guitarist Archer Prewitt, bassist Eric Claridge, and percussionist John McEntire. Although each of these men is praised for wearing multiple artistic hats, The Sea and Cake maintains a quiet and all around unpretentious public personality.
According to John Corbett’s early press release on Car Alarm, “Sam Prekop says the band wanted to make a record that felt like they had never stopped playing, a continuously limbered up ensemble that parlayed its last tour into new material.”
A simple chore for The Sea and Cake, as they have a natural ability to parlay old sounds into new ones. Actually, one might even say, the band invokes in their listener a sense of musical déjà-vu.
The group is comprised of singer/guitarist Sam Prekop, guitarist Archer Prewitt, bassist Eric Claridge, and percussionist John McEntire. Although each of these men is praised for wearing multiple artistic hats, The Sea and Cake maintains a quiet and all around unpretentious public personality.
According to John Corbett’s early press release on Car Alarm, “Sam Prekop says the band wanted to make a record that felt like they had never stopped playing, a continuously limbered up ensemble that parlayed its last tour into new material.”
A simple chore for The Sea and Cake, as they have a natural ability to parlay old sounds into new ones. Actually, one might even say, the band invokes in their listener a sense of musical déjà-vu.
Listening to Car Alarm is much like resting on a cozy hillside and watching afternoon clouds roll by. The album and its songs are like the clouds themselves, each taking on a new and wonderful shape, yet also resembling, in color and texture, what has been seen in each of the clouds before.
On this album there is but one unfortunate happening. The title track, Car Alarm, should have been left behind—the one dark cloud that doesn’t fit in the otherwise bright sky. The song seems off, a bit depressed, and brings the album down. Appropriately titled, it is the album’s car alarm.
Aerial opens the album, and is the obvious choice, with its edgy guitar intro. Beyond that, the main tempo gets the head bobbing and the heart reeling for more.
High points come with the songs, A Fuller Moon, On a Letter, Weekend, New Schools, and Down in the City. All of these are classic The Sea and Cake sonatas.
Although the band’s lyrics are as amorphous and organic as their soft post-rock grooves, the jazzy timing on each track brings an orderliness and shape to the songs.
New Schools, for example, is so well crafted, and full of rhythms—guitar strokes, clicks, drums, and bass thumps—that it flows beautifully the entire way through.
The band’s music has always embraced a dichotomy: soft and hard, airy yet solid.
It is rock, for sure. But it could equally fit as a soundtrack to a leisurely afternoon stroll in the country, or to the hustle and bustle of a downtown city street. Either way, there is an easiness to it, and a flow, that just seems natural.
Since the release of their self-titled debut record in 1993, this post-jazz/rock group has naturally gained a generous, yet somewhat underground, fan base—a polite collection of admirers, who are perhaps, in themselves, a testament to the band’s mellow yet sophisticated nature.
And deservingly so, The Sea and Cake have earned their accolades. Car Alarm is another winner, a rock reverie for anyone ready to kick back and dream.
On this album there is but one unfortunate happening. The title track, Car Alarm, should have been left behind—the one dark cloud that doesn’t fit in the otherwise bright sky. The song seems off, a bit depressed, and brings the album down. Appropriately titled, it is the album’s car alarm.
Aerial opens the album, and is the obvious choice, with its edgy guitar intro. Beyond that, the main tempo gets the head bobbing and the heart reeling for more.
High points come with the songs, A Fuller Moon, On a Letter, Weekend, New Schools, and Down in the City. All of these are classic The Sea and Cake sonatas.
Although the band’s lyrics are as amorphous and organic as their soft post-rock grooves, the jazzy timing on each track brings an orderliness and shape to the songs.
New Schools, for example, is so well crafted, and full of rhythms—guitar strokes, clicks, drums, and bass thumps—that it flows beautifully the entire way through.
The band’s music has always embraced a dichotomy: soft and hard, airy yet solid.
It is rock, for sure. But it could equally fit as a soundtrack to a leisurely afternoon stroll in the country, or to the hustle and bustle of a downtown city street. Either way, there is an easiness to it, and a flow, that just seems natural.
Since the release of their self-titled debut record in 1993, this post-jazz/rock group has naturally gained a generous, yet somewhat underground, fan base—a polite collection of admirers, who are perhaps, in themselves, a testament to the band’s mellow yet sophisticated nature.
And deservingly so, The Sea and Cake have earned their accolades. Car Alarm is another winner, a rock reverie for anyone ready to kick back and dream.
