Easily one of the most interesting pop records of its day, the debut album by
the Cake (not the '90s pop band,
Cake) is a brilliant if extremely schizophrenic record. Based around a trio of female singers and the production genius of Jack Nitzche, this record sounds like it was record over three sessions over a lengthy period of time, thus exposing the group's musical evolution. In this way, it is quite similar to
Love's Da Capo or Buffalo Springfield Again, but the similarities end there. The first three tracks are virtual Spector homages, and are all stone classics, often sounding like obscure Ronettes tracks that should have all gone Top Ten in the mid-'60s. "Medieval Love," "Firefly," and "Rainbow Wood" are seemingly from a different era as the album's openers, and are comparable to the baroque experiments on records like Da Capo and early
Left Banke. Unfortunately, the latter half of the album is filled with relatively vanilla R&B-lite covers like "Mockingbird." ~ Matthew Greenwald