Fashion Nugget (Clean) [Clean, Original recording reissued]

Cake | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 17, 1996)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Clean, Original recording reissued
• Label: Volcano
• ASIN: B00005ABI8
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,145 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brain-Expanding Experience, March 23, 2001

By 

3rdeadly3rd (Brisbane, Queensland Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fashion Nugget (Clean) (Audio CD)

Cake are certainly an alternative group. Their music is about as willfully different to the mainstream as you can go while still being always listenable and their lyrics range from the mundane and symbolic to the intentionally bizarre.

"Fashion Nugget" contains most of Cake's best work to date - especially the singles "The Distance", "Frank Sinatra" and "I Will Survive". These three tracks alone serve as a great introduction to Cake's musical philosophy.

The lyrics throughout the album either cover simple topics (such as cars) or seem to go some way toward discussing more cerebral topics such as - I think - the breakdown of families, the nature of love and friendship and so on.

Cake's singer - whose name I have forgotten - has a marvellously deadpan delivery with (on "I Will Survive" especially) a very creative use of pause to convey ironic meaning. Their musicians are also top-notch, often giving the impression of being just about to veer off into dissonance only to just hold it together to the end of the track.

Most of the tracks here will appear to be quite obscure on first listening - feel free to think "what the heck are they on about?" after you've heard tracks like "The Distance" and "Open Book". But, after thinking about the lyrics, you'll probably decide that they mean something - just what is most probably up to you.

In that may lie the entire point of the album. The lyrics mean different things to different people depending on what they are thinking at the time - they are that symbolic.

The other attraction of the album for me is that Cake cannot take themselves seriously in music. While other artists are writing self-conscious lyrics which sound almost identical, Cake are experimenting with words ("When you tried to tell me the one for me was you/I was inside your mattress in 1982" - Daria), music (their guitarist sounds at times like a terrible amateur but then switches to be the guitar equivalent of Primus' Des Claypool - simply amazing work on "Race Car Ya Yas" and a few other places in the album) and conventions (watch the almost-harmony in the chorus of "Open Book").

This album is definitely not for everyone. Even those who do like it will probably have times of hating it alternating with times of playing it and nothing else. It is, however, an album worth listening to - even if you don't own it, there's something here for most moods.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best CD in my collection hands down, April 30, 2001

By 

Paul Spencer Hemingway (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fashion Nugget (Clean) (Audio CD)

You've probably heard the radio tracks: I will survive & The distance, for example. And they are great. But what this album offers is 10 or so other tracks that are genious...the horns, the lyrics, McCrea's deadpan voice...Cake's other two offerings are awesome, but this is the one that hasn't left my CD changer for 4 years. Not a bad song on the album. Check out Open Book, Stickshifts, and She'll come back...

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great, February 17, 2002

By 

Anne M. "Pop culture nut" (Tiny San Francisco Apartment) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fashion Nugget (Clean) (Audio CD)

I have all the Cake albums, and I think they are all wonderful. However, despite my partiality to Prolonging the Magic, I really like this album. The songs are the weirdest (with the most bizarre lyrics) out of the four albums, but the musicality can speak to anyone. I especially like "Friend Is A Four-Letter Word" because it's so lyrically simple, but musically complex.