The Sea and Cake

Fans of Chicago's jazz-inspired soft/post-rock mainstays, The Sea And Cake can rest easy in the fact that after fifteen years and eight albums, the band has stayed their long-traveled and tuneful course with Car Alarm. Though displaying the same growth and sonic evolution that any band who opens themselves up to new influences, ideas and idiosyncrasies would, Car Alarm finds The Sea And Cake still locked in perpetual embrace with the bright n' breezy melodic sound that teems from previous releases in a solid display of four musicians who have mastered their craft.

Armed with a Ph.D. in music, guitarist/vocalist Sam Prekop leads his band mates through a dozen lightly polished, feel good tunes ripe with jazzy chords, laidback melodies and subtle hints of world beats and polyrhythmic flair. Quirky and tastefully understated bytes of electronica emerge on "CMS Sequence" and "Weekend" to give the tracks a bit of deviation from the album's "easy-like-Sunday-morning" norm. Car Alarm doesn't offer much in the way of hooks or unforgettable songwriting, nor do the tunes present much dynamic variation from one to the next, but there is a smile-inducing charm to the overall product.

—Ryan Ogle
11.10.08

Released 17 months after Everybody, a mere blink of an eye for this group of Renaissance men, Car Alarm represents an attempt by the Sea and Cake to be a working band -- for what may be the last time, what with family obligations to place among the vast array of outside interests. The album was written in a burst just after returning from an Australian tour, and recorded in a fairly quick span as well. The results seem to have refreshed this band of post-rock stalwarts, who may never need (or desire) a radical shift in sound, but should have already easily fallen prey to laziness -- an album where the adjective "workmanlike" becomes an insult rather than a compliment. Their brisk, efficient indie rock hasn't changed radically, but the insertion of an instrumental here and an electronics-heavy track there makes for needed counterpoint. The individual members of the quartet are still nearly telepathic in their group interplay; John McEntire's drums set the tone for each song while Eric Claridge's bass anchors the lower register, and the twin guitars of Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt scope out the higher frequencies. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide