121204 Cake, Montreal, QC

Though I’ve never really been much of a fan of the band Cake, my friend Jay convinced me to join him at their show at Metropolis on December 12th, 2004.  

I don’t think Jay had to try very hard.  Montreal generally makes for a fun little road trip from Ottawa and you can’t go wrong seeing shows at Metropolis.  Is it a club?  Is it a theatre?  I don’t know but I do know it’s roomy, it’s got great sight-lines and short drink lines, and they consistently book super-awesome entertainment.  Almost every band I’ve seen at Metropolis I’ve also seen in a 20,000+ seat arena; The Tragically Hip, Prince, The Beastie Boys, Herbie Hancock…Not bad for a venue with a capacity around 2,500.

Before this show I was only familiar with one Cake song, and it wasn’t even a Cake song.  I’m referring (of course) to their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.  Their bass-heavy version has a nifty subtle groove that is a perfect bed for the lead singer’s deadpan voice.  It sounds almost like a lounge singer’s joke track, but that bass line underneath those vocals created the perfect elixir to make it a hit.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that they started with a song that was already a hit.  All they had to do was not mess it up too much and voilà, it’s (still) a hit song.

And while I’ll admit that in the years following this concert I have only managed to familiarize myself with a tiny handful of Cake’s music beyond their Gloria Gaynor cover, I did really enjoy this show.  It was groovy, it was poppy, it was upbeat and unpretentious and it had horns, but the thing that struck me the most was just how exactly the singer sounded like the singer.  I know that’s silly; of course the dude’s voice is going to sound like the dude’s voice, but his vocal timbre is just so unique and identifiable that I spent most of the show revelling in how perfectly he was matching the sound of himself.  Like I say, I know it’s silly, but a guy can’t control what attracts him at a live show.

So yeah, Cake puts on a good show, and I really should get one of their albums.