It’s an I-5 battle as Sacramento’s Cake takes on LA’s Margo Guryan.
Good morning!
Today we’re taking a look at Cake’s Comfort Eagle and Margo Guryan’s 25 Demos.
Note: As many of you saw, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 2001 challenge and noted that I’d be writing some of these up.
The plan is to do quick hits on each first-round matchup and post them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably be a few typos. We’ll also have a few guest posts along the way, so make sure to stay tuned for those!
Check ’em out and let me know your thoughts! Chin wags & hot takes welcome! Sharing and restacks always appreciated.
KA—
Cake- Comfort Eagle
Having to force-rank Cake albums would be rough sledding. These parlor games are always fun, but is it possible to just do a six-way tie? If you like a little bit of theremin with your rock, you’re in luck. Maybe a bit of quasi-rapping laced with droll wit? Want some horns and a little git box with choruses purpose-built for singing along while stuck in traffic? I’ve got good news!
Comfort Eagle is the band’s 4th record, and the short version is it’s more of the same. And hey, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? The NorCal band knows what it’s got and isn’t interested in lowball offers.
What they have are tracks oozing with deceptively catchy riffs and songs that transport you to a sun-baked world of short skirts/long jackets where everyone calls you “dude.” Speaking of which, most people will recognize “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” which had a decent run on the charts and still gets played to this day.
What people might not know is that the band held a (then novel) online vote to pick which track would go second. The title track won, but after 9/11, the band decided to switch to “Love You Madly” stating “Due to unforeseen changes in national media, CAKE must now change its upcoming single from ‘Comfort Eagle’ to ‘Love You Madly.’ We apologize to those of you who voted for the latter, but due to its airplane, corporate, and Middle Eastern references, ‘Comfort Eagle’ has been deemed inappropriate for today’s emotional climate.”
Fair enough. Fall of ’01 was a weird space to be in. Love You Madly is catchy, but not as much as Comfort Eagle. But we’re talking a game of inches here; everything on this record is catchy. If you only know “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” consider this a sign to check out the rest of the record—it’s so much more than the one song.
On the title track, Cake says they are billing [you] a religion. Consider me converted.
Margo Guryan- 25 Demos
We recently finished rewatching Mad Men here at the house, and 25 Demos is the perfect sort of record for a music supervisor to tap for some of the scenes. It’s purpose-built for playing through a transistor radio, and you can imagine it playing in the background as Betty smokes in the kitchen stewing about, well, whatever was bothering her that day—or over b-roll footage of the city (ever notice how few scenes took place in the street? No? Just me? Okay, then.). It’s just unknown enough to send people scurrying to sites like Tunefind and just known enough to catch the attention of the hipper among us too. In this scenario, I would be firmly in the former camp.
An aversion to performing prompted Guryan to move from singing songs to writing them. Reading a bit online, apparently, she first did this to get out of a piano recital. Later, like many, she had her mind rearranged hearing “God Only Knows” and set out to hear as much pop as she could get her hands on. Those artists influenced her work, and eventually, she had enough to put together a record. Her manager (and later husband) landed her a record deal, but she was unwilling to tour behind it (see above), and so it went almost nowhere—except cutout bins and the cabinets of the few lucky enough to have found it before it faded out.
The record is full of the sort of sunshine and avant-garde pop you might expect. If you’re a fan of Burt Bacharach or (insert favorite Yé-Yé artists here), you’ll find plenty to enjoy. I don’t know if we needed 25 songs of this; maybe 14–16 would’ve been ideal, but it is being sold as a retrospective, so there’s that.
As the title implies, these are demos, and a couple are pretty spartan, but most are more fleshed out than I would’ve expected. Maybe that’s down to what she was looking for or just how things were done back in the day. Either way, the result is a treasure trove of her work. I don’t know if calling this sort of thing a retrospective fits when it comes to an unknown artist, but whatever. Guryan might’ve had no taste for the stage, but her ear for rhythm is undeniable. Her vocals drift between wispy and ethereal—not the strongest voice ever to come through your speakers, but it fits perfectly both with the style of the time and the music behind her.
One of the fun things about these brackets is finding these forgotten gems. How’d this get into the final 128? Was it something someone found in their parents’ stereo cabinet? Did they hear her on the radio? Maybe they took a flyer on a record at a garage sale or while crate-digging. Beats me, but I’m glad they liked it enough to share it with all of us. This was a treat.
Bottom Line:
I played both of these while at work, and both were perfect for the time of day I heard them. Cake was a nice little jolt- something always appreciated at 4 AM, while Margo Guryan’s brand of sunshine pop was well suited for mid-morning.
Honestly, both of these are great and did a good job of giving me a bit of reactive FOMO. I wish I’d listened to more Cake! So it goes. These are obviously two wildly different records, but I have to say that Comfort Eagle felt a couple of songs too short, while 25 Songs went on a touch too long. You always want to leave ‘em wanting more. For that reason, Cake’s getting my vote and bracket pick.
Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my takes? Which one of these would you vote for? Sound off in the comments!
Kevin Sent 
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