Cake

Cake’s droll alt-rock is instantly recognizable from the distinctive aural braid of Moog, trumpet, and vocalist John McCrea’s syncopated sprechstimme. The band found some early success on pop radio with 1996’s Fashion Nugget, particularly the still-played-at-sports-games single “The Distance” and a distinctly less emotive cover of Gloria Gaynor’s disco anthem “I Will Survive.” And for most of the 18 years the band’s been around, it’s stuck close to that original dry formula. It’s somewhat like AC/DC in that its songs tend to feel fairly interchangeable, without a ton of distinction between albums; fortunately, it’s also somewhat like AC/DC in that the one Platonic song of which all its tunes are but cast shadows is enjoyable enough that it would be silly to make a fuss about it. And it seems like people agree—despite the band’s biggest hit dating back to the mid-’90s and a seven-year break between albums, Cake’s latest effort, Showroom Of Compassion, debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts in 2011.

Updated 06/27/2012