It's nice to see Cake giving Modest Mouse's old cover art for The Moon And Antarctica a new home isn't it? Pressure Chief is John McCrea and company's follow-up to my personal favorite album of theirs, 2001's Comfort Eagle. Evidently Cake became a little too comfortable because this new one isn't even close to being as good. The first half of Pressure Chief suffers from extremely poor musical decisions, and just plain boring tunes. Whoever decided that more synth work and less guitar and trumpet would be a good direction for Cake should be fired. And whomever it was that decided that "No Phone," the first single for this album and worst of their career should be the album's centerpiece should follow suit and clean out their desk. The entire A side of this album feels painfully like They Might Be Giants throwaways, especially "Carbon Monoxide" with its repeated question line of "Where's the air?"

Shockingly however, Cake steers this seemingly unfashionable nugget back to calmer waters on the second half. "She'll Hang The Baskets" and especially "End Of The Movie" benefit from sparse, pretty guitar and keyboard work. And on the wonderful "Palm of Your Hand," McCrea and some beautiful acoustics and organ work play out very nicely, and almost make you forget how terrible the first half of this album was. I said "almost." But with only half an album to recommend, and the boys virtually sounding on cruise contol throughout, this is probably Cake's weakest effort since their debut record Motorcade Of Generosity.