Like beck, singer John McCrea of Cake slings non sequiturs like a nouvelle cuisine short-order cook, offering images that can seem indulgent, if not pretentiously disconnected. "You twist the knife, then go home to kiss your wife," he sings on "You Turn the Screws" in a dry, David Byrne deadpan. "A bigger, better slice of what you like ... flimsy as it is, it's open mike, punk rock/Red, white and blue."

Soon enough, though, "You Turn the Screws" coalesces into a sly commentary on greed and power. It's a diatribe disguised as gibberish, and that's the secret ingredient in the Cake mix. Throughout Prolonging the Magic, the band's third and sharpest album, this Sacramento, California, five-piece concocts silly little songs loaded with anything-but-silly subtexts. One minute McCrea is marveling at the honest work of tradesmen ("the barber can give you a haircut"), and in the next line, he's playing a tortured poet, declaring, "I don't wanna go to Sunset Strip, I don't wanna feel the emptiness" (on "Sheep Go to Heaven"). The music has enough range to accommodate these leaps – there are songs modeled after country weepers (the decidedly un-Bacharachian "Walk On By"), songs that echo the punch-line funk of Was (Not Was) and even a song that borrows its devotional theme from a gospel classic ("Hem of Your Garment"). And though the arrangements, which rely on Herb Alpert-like trumpet melodies and assorted other kitsch, are plenty smart, it's the wordplay that makes Cake less filling – but heavy. (RS 800)

TOM MOON