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Record Review: CAKE, B-Sides and Rarities

by Kathryn Durfee
01/30/2008

Over the span of their 15-year career, deadpan rockers CAKE have amassed an assortment of tracks that just never quite fit on their earlier albums. Now, with October's B-Sides and Rarities, these tracks have finally found a home.

B-Sides and Rarities is more of a cover album than anything else. This 11-track collection features the band's take on Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night," Barry White's "Never Gonna Give You Up," Kenny Rogers' "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town," songs by country legends Buck Owens and George Jones, and even the Muppets! ("Mahna Mahna").

The most popular cover on the album is that of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs." The band has here included not only a studio recording but a live performance featuring special guest Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips. Their version is good, but perhaps only because the song is so good on its own.

B-Sides also includes two essentially instrumental tracks and a demo version of their hit "Short Skirt/Long Jacket." Frankly, you can never have too many versions of this song.

With so many country covers, the album has an undeniable country twang to it, a noticeable drift from their typical alt-rock sound. Aside from "Short Skirt/Long Jacket," the CAKE-iest song is "It's Coming Down" about a torn and ending romance.

The CD itself is pleasing not only to the ears but to the nose as well. The cover art is "scratch and sniff," with a plethora of different scents to please even the pickiest of CAKE fans: red/fresh cut roses, yellow/banana, brown/leather, green/fresh cut grass, and purple/grape. I personally only recently discovered this tid bit of handy information; I was most concerned upon receiving my copy of B-Sides to find that it smelled completely different than any other disc in my collection! Alas, I got grape.

Overall, the album is worth a listen but will probably only find a place on the shelf by true CAKE fans. If you are only a fringe fan, I suggest exploring more of their past releases. The group plans to release a live album entitled Live at the Crystal Palace soon and is currently in the studio working on their sixth studio release, tentatively due out early 2008.