Sure, it’s easy to give longtime Chicago pop-hypnotists The Sea and Cake shit for their sort-of random and, I don’t know, puffy-sounding band name: “Oh, look at me, I’m in ‘The Sea and Cake,’ and I wear a scarf when I read poetry and play Exquisite Corpse all day with my sugar cube-dunking friends by the sea and we all laugh and eat cake and it’s delicious.” (See? I told you it was easy.) But actually, if you look closer, you’ll notice that the sea and cake (as things) share many more logical associations that you might think. For example, the sea is salty; cake is sweet. So, logically, eating some cake and washing it down with seawater would be at least as delicious as a Take 5 candy bar is. Also, “the sea” is a general, kinda abstract term that can represent any number of specific bodies of salt water. Likewise, “cake” is also an abstract term insofar as I cannot order any at Bakers Square. See what I’m getting at here?
Fine, if you’re still not buying it, The Sea and Cake will be touring the US this November in support of this past spring’s jazzy, breezy, salty, sweet, Thrill Jockey mini-LP The Moonlight Butterfly (TMT Review). Maybe you can ask them to dumb it down for you. Ooh, wait, I just thought of another one: cakes have layers; the sea has… wait no, never mind. That one sucks.
Dates:
11.04.11 - Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
11.05.11 - Toronto, ON - Lee’s Palace
11.06.11 - Montreal, QC - La Sala Rossa
11.07.11 - Boston, MA - Brighton Music Hall
11.08.11 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
11.09.11 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
11.10.11 - Washington, DC - Black Cat
11.11.11 - Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506
11.12.11 - Louisville, KY - Headliners Music Hall
12.02.11 - Seattle, WA - The Crocodile
12.03.11 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
12.04.11 - Arcata, CA - Jambalaya
12.05.11 - San Francisco, CA - Slim’s
12.06.11 - Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour
12.07.11 - San Diego, CA - Cashbah
12.08.11 - Austin, TX - The Mohawk
12.10.11 - Mexico City, Mexico - Volla Acoustique
12.17.11 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
• The Sea and Cake: http://www.theseaandcake.com
• Thrill Jockey: http://www.thrilljockey.com
