The Sea & Cake
The Fawn
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The Sea & Cake
The Fawn
Thrill Jockey, 1997
RiYL: Steely Dan, Shrimp Boat, The Coctails, Luna |
The result is a sound that is more than a bit hard to pin down -- a fact that only works against the Sea & Cake's The Fawn. At its best, the record highlights refined song structuring, delightful rhythms courtesy of indie jack-of-all-trades John McEntire and Prekop's soothing vocals. But at times, The Fawn blurs the curious (and rarely crossed) line between indie rock and, say, elevator music.
This duality is immediately felt. "Sporting Life" opens the album with a great groove, plush organ and strings and a just-right melody tenderly crooned by Prekop, while the tropical-flavored "The Argument" serves as the perfect soundtrack to a sunny, summer afternoon.
Here, the Sea & Cake's genre sampling delivers playful and contemplative music that borders on irresistibility. Yet, the formula falls flat on the wimpy "The Ravine" and the sleep-inducing instrumental "Rossignol." These two numbers mirror the kind of nebulous flim-flam heard on lite-rock radio and stick out like sore thumbs alongside the album's more groove-oriented pieces.
Along the same lines, McEntire's increased use of a drum machine creates beats likely to get even the most stoic indie rockers up and grooving. But this type of instrumentation tries one's patience before too long, as does Prekop's penchant for shifting in and out of tune at any given time and his overuse of barely intelligible lyrics.
Nevertheless, The Fawn does possess a few surprises, namely the dropped-D instrumental "Black Tree In The Bee Yard" and the keyboard-happy, breezy title track. Well-crafted pieces, these are.
Packed with enough interesting material to demand repeated listens, The Fawn still fails, not for a lack of good songs, but a for an ill-defined sense of purpose.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"