Whether it's their novelty songs, grandfatherly fashion sense, or impressive but modestly applied musicianship, Cake is a band that seems to generate as much indifference as inspiration.| As one observer at tonight's show commented after singer John McCrea had just unloosed a bit of his trademark wooden prose: "These lyrics are terrible." At the same time, hundreds of fans were singing along wildly as McCrea, obscured behind sunglasses and a fisherman's hat, riffed on the line "sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell."

Such polarization marks McCrea's musical life. Last time his band played in New York, at the Bowery Ballroom this past October, the show was halted due to a fire in an adjacent building. In March, the laid-back singer broke his hand moving furniture. Fire and furniture. Brushes with rock & roll excess amid the mundane. Despite bona fide hits ("The Distance," their cover of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and, most recently, "Never There" off of Prolonging the Magic) Cake have failed to completely capitalize on their explosions. In fact, McCrea almost folded the band last year after guitarist Greg Brown, who penned "The Distance," left the group. But, like the song says, "As long as I know how to rock I know I'll be alive."

Framed by a pair of six-foot particle board candelabras, Cake (McCrea, guitarist Xan McCurdy, bassist Gabriel Nelson, drummer Todd Roper and trumpeter/keyboardist Vincent Di Fiore) relentlessly worked the crowd with assured playing and friendly sarcasm ("It's so great to be here in New York. You're more in tune than the rest of the country"). Over the course of nearly an hour and a half, they expertly navigated their way through eighteen songs from their three-album catalog of funky So Cal alterna-swing. With the exception of a mildly sped-up version of Fashion Nugget's "Stickshifts and Safety Belts" -- replete with impeccable three-part harmonies and a twangy ritard -- Cake played mainly by the book, sticking to arrangements and song lengths as they are on record. Still, it didn't take a refined ear to appreciate the group's talents. During "Frank Sinatra," McCurdy and Di Fiore effortlessly traded guitar and horn lines across the blissful rhythms that Roper and Nelson rolled out like a red carpet. When McCrea sang his hits in his soothing sing-speak cadence, the entire room seemed to float atop his words and delicate acoustic guitar playing. That such a master of deadpan can command a mob of unruly kids in his quasi-cabaret fashion is something of a miracle in itself.

Before he led his troops through "Never There" and the four encore songs (including the sing-alongs "Satan Is My Motor" and "Friend Is a Four Letter Word"), McCrea paused to thank the crowd for their "patronage." "We realize that in New York you have your choice of bands," he said in his best airline industry-mocking voice, "and we thank you for choosing Cake." A few short minutes later -- during which McCrea made a trip up the speaker wall to taunt journalists in the balcony -- the band had made its exit, leaving Roper alone on stage to carry the song to its end on maracas alone. Cake had brought the crowd to a boil and then, effortlessly, let them down easy. It was a subtle but masterful move. Precisely the type of stage smarts it takes to go the distance.

JOE ROSENTHAL(June 15, 1999)