Search - Cakekitchen :: Stompin Thru the Boneyard

Their last album's a great place to begin

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 08/27/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Actually the first Cakekitchen album I heard, this is their last, they being Kiwi leader Peter Jefferies and his French drummer. For two musicians, they create a finely sequenced disc of aggressive tunes that belie the fact that it's pretty much Jefferies' nearly solo project by now; unlike some of his earlier Cakekitchen projects, this one exudes more confidence and leaps out from the speakers more assuredly than those released before the Merge label signed the duo.



It's therefore a pity that at this stage in the career, they apparently called it quits. This fits well into the college-alt radio format, while not so laid-back as the Cakekitchen's earlier 90s albums. Jefferies sounds like Bowie but less self-aware, and he uses the similarity with the Thin White Duke to explore darker corners than earier albums had--and to better effect, for the denser production compresses his songs into a tenser, more jittery delivery that suits Jefferies better than the janglier sound he can do well but that leaves him sounding more like the other New Zealand acts of the decade."