The way critics have gone on about the Brazilian influences in this band's music, you'd be forgiven if you arrived to their concerts expecting a bar full of tropical beverages
May 6, 2007 (Press Release) --
"I was kind of sick of hearing that," says Sam Prekop, singer for Chicago indie-rock stalwarts The Sea & Cake, of the band's alleged South American influences. "I blocked it out. ... You could hold a gun to my head and I could not play a single Brazilian song."
Prekop calls his band's relationship to Brazilian records a "kinship." The Sea & Cake's acclaimed guitarist, Archer Prewitt, explains further: "A lot of what we respond to in Brazilian music is the musicality of it, the choice of chords. I've always been partial to the jazzier chords."
The Sea & Cake is certainly jazzier, in general. In indie-rock, the band stands out as a consistently light -- but musically quite dense -- and breezy quartet, often bouncing along on grooves both loose and locked, and supporting Prekop's thin, airy vocals and impressionistic words. More than most bands, The Sea & Cake strives for beauty.
"A lot of the Brazilian stuff attempts genuinely to get at the service of beauty," Prekop says. "It's sunny and melancholy at the same time, and that quality -- that mixture -- is always something to strive for."
On the band's latest CD, "Everybody" -- available Tuesday from local label Thrill Jockey -- The Sea & Cake gets down to basics as they rarely have before. Gone are whatever distractions have been written off in the past as foreign influence. Few extra sounds and instruments intrude on this batch of songs. What we have is a compact guitar-bass-drums-vocals band, playing tighter pop-song forms than they have in years.
"These are almost chiseled little pop numbers," Prekop says, seemingly surprised to admit it aloud. "Sometimes people forget: We are a pop band."
Location, location
The change is arresting and vital, a radical departure. But it's also subtle, ephemeral, difficult to detect. Such is the paradox of The Sea & Cake (it's suitably cryptic name a result of Prekop misunderstanding the title of a Gastr del Sol song, "The C in Cake"). Noticing it likely depends on how long you've been unraveling their music.
The renewed focus -- let's not call it "stripped down" -- is largely the result of location, location, location. Instead of recording in or near Chicago with drummer John McEntire producing, as the band has done for every record except its first, The Sea & Cake traveled around Lake Michigan's tip to Key Club Studio in Benton Harbor, Mich. There they holed up with producer Brian Paulson for sessions Prekop said had "a more immediate performance quality."
Not surprising since they'd arrived at the studio this time with songs intact.
Source: http://www.msn.com
Prekop calls his band's relationship to Brazilian records a "kinship." The Sea & Cake's acclaimed guitarist, Archer Prewitt, explains further: "A lot of what we respond to in Brazilian music is the musicality of it, the choice of chords. I've always been partial to the jazzier chords."
The Sea & Cake is certainly jazzier, in general. In indie-rock, the band stands out as a consistently light -- but musically quite dense -- and breezy quartet, often bouncing along on grooves both loose and locked, and supporting Prekop's thin, airy vocals and impressionistic words. More than most bands, The Sea & Cake strives for beauty.
"A lot of the Brazilian stuff attempts genuinely to get at the service of beauty," Prekop says. "It's sunny and melancholy at the same time, and that quality -- that mixture -- is always something to strive for."
On the band's latest CD, "Everybody" -- available Tuesday from local label Thrill Jockey -- The Sea & Cake gets down to basics as they rarely have before. Gone are whatever distractions have been written off in the past as foreign influence. Few extra sounds and instruments intrude on this batch of songs. What we have is a compact guitar-bass-drums-vocals band, playing tighter pop-song forms than they have in years.
"These are almost chiseled little pop numbers," Prekop says, seemingly surprised to admit it aloud. "Sometimes people forget: We are a pop band."
Location, location
The change is arresting and vital, a radical departure. But it's also subtle, ephemeral, difficult to detect. Such is the paradox of The Sea & Cake (it's suitably cryptic name a result of Prekop misunderstanding the title of a Gastr del Sol song, "The C in Cake"). Noticing it likely depends on how long you've been unraveling their music.
The renewed focus -- let's not call it "stripped down" -- is largely the result of location, location, location. Instead of recording in or near Chicago with drummer John McEntire producing, as the band has done for every record except its first, The Sea & Cake traveled around Lake Michigan's tip to Key Club Studio in Benton Harbor, Mich. There they holed up with producer Brian Paulson for sessions Prekop said had "a more immediate performance quality."
Not surprising since they'd arrived at the studio this time with songs intact.
Source: http://www.msn.com
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