Click to listen to Cake's Showroom Of Compassion

Cake graduated from the same Nineties class of alt-rock oddballs that produced Beck and Weezer. But where their contemporaries evolved or died, they've stayed true to the same droll sound (and not unsuccessfully; Cake songs are weirdly ubiquitous in movie and TV comedies). Their sixth disc has the usual whirring keyboards and winking mariachi horns, all subject to John McCrea's satiric sing-talking. He lays into hipsters, guys with mustaches and Angelenos, tempering his derision with pathos. "I need a hideaway," he sings on the Seventies-rocking "Sick of You." It's a quirky, cloistered approach, and McCrea's sticking with it.

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“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."