The Sea and Cake
The Sea and Cake

The key to understanding, at least in part, a band's music can lie in the most varied variables: the social background of the members, their place of origin, the chosen name, and so on.

In this latter case, the group in question fits: The Sea and Cake chose their moniker from a phonetic misunderstanding about the name of the track “The C in Cake” by Gastr del Sol.

And so it goes that the music of the Chicago quartet is amused (it's clear the - at least initial - intent of divertissement among musicians coming from other formations) and entertaining (for those who listen), without, however, ever bordering on the cloying or the cheesy.

Among the notes of this self-titled debut, released by Thrill Jockey, one can grasp an unexpected playful and (self)ironic side of post-rock. Post-pop (?), if one wants to attach yet another useless label to them.

Over 46 minutes, divided into 10 tracks, one encounters the marimbas of the (in its own way) tropical “Choice Blanket” and the jazzy and relaxed atmospheres of “Bombay”; the irreverent sax incursions in the atypical groove of “Polio” and “Culabra Cut”, as well as the use of a more subdued sax in the closing “Lost in Autumn”, which drags itself (“So slow you're going”) with indolence leading to 20 seconds of silence. Then again the noise backdrop of the guitar in “So Long To The Captain” and the melodic “Showboat Angel”, which, with a catchy chorus, could have become a semi-hit of 1994.

Simply one of the lightest records, like the head among/in the clouds of the boy on the cover, I've had the fortune to listen to.