New Music: The Sea and Cake, The North Sea

The Sea and Cake - Exact to Me (Thrill Jockey 2007)

The Sea and Cake – Everybody / Thrill Jockey

“Hey! Is that the new Sea and Cake??? What does it sound like?”

“Well… umm…. You know, sounds like the Sea and Cake.”

I was speaker one in this conversation about a week and a half ago after spotting a promo copy of the upcoming release from Chicago’s grooviest indie-pop band, The Sea and Cake. While kind of mundane, it is an exchange that will no doubt take place numerous times with Everybody, the quartet’s first album in four years. But while it would definitely be considered a negative slant with most bands, I do not think such a remark would discourage any fan of the band. The Sea and Cake very much play a singular brand of endearingly groovy indie-pop, but it is a sound surrounded by intricate peculiarities, refined craftsmanship and melodies that pluck your heartstrings with care and exuberance. Everybody once again tackles pop music strung through jazz, blue-eyed soul, gentle funk, Brazilian and krautrock ideals, but this time the Chicago quartet aim for a more lively, not-quite-as-precise sound with tributaries of West African guitar grooves and rocksteady bounce.

The Sea and Cake came together in 1993 with all four musicians already spending time in acclaimed post-rock groups. At first intended as a one-off project to mix Chicago’s burgeoning textural and cerebral rock style with Afro-Caribbean rhythms for their self-title debut, guitarists Sam Prekop (Shrimp Boat) and Archer Prewitt (Coctails), bassist Eric Claridge (Shrimp Boat) and drummer John McEntire (Tortoise, Bastro) received such warm feedback that the initial side-project became a highly regarded concentration for most of the members. Actually named after McEntire’s misinterpretation of the song “The C in Cake” by Gastr del Sol, whom he was drumming for at the time, the key to the Cake’s sound is the distinctive contributions by each member: Prekop’s breezy, elegant croon and careful phrasing, Prewitt’s pinging, lyrical guitar lines, Claridge’s buoyant, nearly funky bass, and McEntire’s crisp, precise backbeat. Incredibly tight and refined, The Sea and Cake effervesce an almost debonair charm with their poppy indie-rock, and while their frame of sound may be easily predicted, the intricacies are always thoughtful and inventive.

Everybody almost acts as an antithesis to 2003’s One Bedroom. The latter saw the group utilizing drum machines for a more rigid sound, mechanical pop, but this latest entry heads in the complete opposite direction. Recorded in the secluded Key Club Studios in Benton Harber, MI with Brian Paulson (Slint, Wilco, and also the first producer used outside of McEntire in their 14 year existence), Everybody was laid to tape with very little overdubs. As well as a loosening of groove, their sound is not nearly as crisp as past recordings, giving Everybody a more gritty sound… but obviously only gritty in terms of the Sea and Cake back catalogue. The instrumental tone also benefits from this production style; a much more blended, natural, and warm sound to their already soothing vibe.

The biggest standout of Everybody is “Exact to Me,” which utilizes with much success the Western African guitar style (which is bleeding into many genres it seems these days). Prewitt genuinely captures that guitar mode of benga music, no doubt influenced by fellow Thrill Jockey-ers Extra Golden. As well, McEntire takes a much more cymbal heavy and skittering snare beat than his usual snare-centric rhythm. “Middlenight” creeps into your ears with delicate wisps of pedal steel and wavering keyboard coos, while “Crossing Line” actually finds the group significantly rocking out. With Prewitt adding some feedback to the accompanying handclap beat, you’ve got a new potential live favorite. The only track that really reminisces of One Bedroom is “Lightning” with it’s gated snare, but Claridge’s lightly galloping bass, twinkling vibes and glistening keyboards send it swirling into even deeper realms of dream pop.

So yes, Everybody sounds basically what you would expect from The Sea and Cake, but unless you only give it a glancing listen, these are brand new territories for Chicago’s finest indie-poppers. It is really a loosening of the debonair tie that has delegated their existence up to now. Of course you can still bring them home to your mother and she will merrily approve, but it’s much more of a subtly badass, experienced look. The pants hang a little lower, the tie not so taught and shirt a little ruffled. The Sea and Cake now get the go-ahead nod from both your parents and your friends.






The North Sea - Feather-Cloaked Silver Priestless (Type 2007)

The North Sea – Exquisite Idols / Type

During a small college graduation party in the Boondocks of South Carolina, me and a few of my close friends were hanging out in a rural backyard, reminiscing, drinking and just being together as a group for what turned out to be the last time before scattering ourselves around the country. The night was plugging along nicely with nothing too outlandish when one of my friend’s backcountry neighbors stumbled up with a jar of clear liquid with a shriveled peach inside. If you’ve never experienced real, homemade, unsafe for anyone, practically rubbing-alcohol moonshine, I would recommend keeping it that way. To say that shit has a bite is vastly underrating it. If a shot of straight vodka is mosquito bite, real moonshine is an alligator chomp. One of my good friends in attendance that night is a hell of a drinker, not in the sense that he does it all the time, but he could damn well chug any beer or liquor in existence without so much as a hiccup. Well by the time the neighboring redneck stumbled up with his jar of liquid death, this friend was pretty damn drunk and taking dares. One thing led to another, and after a verbal slant to his manhood, he damn near chugged the entire fucking jar. Needless to say, he missed the chair on the way down. Later during the 2a.m. drive home, he threw up in my car three times, and I had to actually hoist his head up while weaving through the back roads of northern South Carolina because he had fell completely limp. With the windows rolled down, nature chirping all around us, my radio humming along to Ravi Shankar’s droning sitar, and the moonshine swirling merrily around his brain, I have a good feeling a music not completely unlike The North Sea’s Exquisite Idols soundtracked his trip home.

Brad Rose is far from a household name even in a blogosphere sense, but he is definitely heading in that direction. His biggest claim to fame to date is his acclaimed 2006 collaboration with the U.K.’s elegant drone trio Rameses III, Night of the Ankou on Type, but he also runs the Digitalis and Foxglove labels, the Foxy Digitalis webzine and records under a number of other monikers, though The North Sea seems to be his latest concentration. For his solo debut under the alias, Rose unleashes a creeping, ethereal and gently chaotic brand of free folk that incorporates drone, blues, folk, psychedelia, ambient and avant-garde with Indian, Greek and rural American influences.

The closest comparison I can come up with is Panda Bear’s recent Person Pitch, but there is one key difference: where Lennox was heavily influenced by Beach Boys melodies, I would say Rose draws much more heavily from The Velvet Underground’s experimental and acerbic rock, if we are looking back to the same era of influence. It is not that Rose’s material is that much more menacing, but where Lennox would opt for infectious, light-hearted coos, Rose will sing almost off-key with an indecipherable slur. Both acts’ music can be described as melancholic, whirling, meandering and trippy, but Rose definitely sounds like he composed his set secluded in his Tulsa, Oklahoma home while Lennox was very much in a Brooklyn state-of-mind (which is actually kind of backwards with the influences’ locale in mind, but you get my drift).

Nearly every one of the eight songs on Exquisite Idols has a different vibe. Most of the songs barely surpass the three-minute mark, except for the 11+ minute “We Conquered the Golden Age,” a freewheeling hookah puff of acoustic folk meandering, cascading drone and unstructured hand percussion. The first two tracks, “Eternal Birds” and “Guiwenneth Of The Green Grass,” set the stage with ambient bird chirps, haunting ghost-town piano rolls and droning keyboards, though the latter is exponentially brighter heading in an almost Takoma-like direction of rural acoustic folk. The album’s most accessible track, “Take It From Me Brother Moses” is all too short at only 2m13s; the delicate backwoods gospel stomp is simple and endearing, a breath of fresh country air in this hazy set of songs. Probably the most Panda Bear-like is “Children of the Ashes,” which crams in a barrage of hand percussions with chiming acoustic guitar overdubs and organ flourishes, though a better vocal melody would have definitely lifted the song to the next level. After the raga-influenced and impressively pulled-off “And Then The Solstice Disappeared,” Exquisite Idols comes to a close with “Feather-Cloaked Silver Priestless,” a raspy folk stomp with a healthy dose of Native American flutes and even a saxophone/banjo duet.

Exquisite Idols is far from perfect, but perfection is overrated. It is nowhere near as accessible as the similar-minded Person Pitch, but no less hypnotic and endearing. Rose definitely sounds as if he is testing the waters with his solo debut, and if that is true, the best is yet to come. And with a wonderful label like Type backing his rural psyche concoctions, I would definitely keep a watchful eye in his direction.

P.S. Like most of the recent Type releases, Matthew Woodson did the cover art, and it is stunning once again.