Search - Cakekitchen :: Devil & Deep Blue Sea

Best album by far

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 08/28/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The last three albums by Peter Jefferies' project The Cakekitchen are their finest, and while this one was recorded around the same time as "Everything" and "Stompin'"--more or less-and they all work well as a trilogy, I favor this one.



It opens with a wonderful, three-part song cycle that builds from delicacy to assertion back to seduction over about ten minutes, as if analogous for a real-life coupling, and I feel it's the most winning array of sounds its leader's put on disc. As a whole, perhaps because he signed to Merge, this album appears to benefit from a renewed direction that his earlier records (on various indie labels in the earlier 90s) lacked, accomplished as they were.



Previously, Jefferies had been seeking a mix of the more subdued Flying Nun pop with the post-punk that Jefferies' voice is suited for. Here, the album, while it honestly does not sustain all the way through the very strong first three song-punch, shows more attention to sonic detail, production (maybe more cash?) and sequencing. Like the act of love, the aftermath fades as the pace of the album slows after the initial excitement, but this langorous progression does not sink into somnabulance, but keeps you awake and curious by a more gentle, still insistent, nudging and tickling of your aural fancies until it subsides."