Two-piece Cakekitchen
packs awesome punch


What: The Cakekitchen
Where: Bar Bodega, Friday night
Reviewed by Mike Houlahan

The Cakekitchen may only be a two piece these days, but they make
enough noise to be a three or four piece and then some. One of Stratford´s
finest exports, Graeme Jefferies, and his fellow partner in musical crime
Frenchman Jean-Yves Douet, make a fairly awesome noise. Any doubts as
to how impressive they would sound which may have been engendered by
the two low-key Jefferies solo numbers which started the show, were quickly
allayed as soon as the twostarted conspiring to make a much bigger noise.

The Cakekitchen can play their own headline gigs all around the world, but
remain almost unknown in the country where their creative leader comes from.
Plenty of curious were on hand to see if the Jefferies legend, built on the back
of such bands as Nocturnal Projections and This Kind of Punishment, still holds
true in these days of The Cakekitchen.

The answer? Yesit does, and then some. A huge, welling gashing sound, backed
with sympathetic and empathic drumming from Douet, made for a memorable night.
There was certainly an old Nocturnal Projections song in there, and I´d have to go
home to check my record collection, but I think there was a This Kind of Punishment
song in there too, to make the old soaks happy.

For those who saw The Cakekitchen when they last played Wellington in 1990 there
was the finely honed anger of Dave the Pimp. But best of all in this show were the more
recent Cakekitchen delights, the songs all but a priviledged few were hearing for the
first time.

Jefferies, with his tendency to face the back of the stage, may not be the most
communitive of performers, but a song like the grand finale, Walking on Glass,
speaks volumes. May it not be another four years before Jefferies again plays
in Wellington.