Evening Standard - Palmerston North
Cakekitchen at The Stomach a tasty morsel
THE CAKEKITCHEN The Stomach, Thursday Oct 12 Reviewed by Colin Williscroft
Moments of great beauty often turn up in unexpected places, and The Stomach was such a place last Thursday night. Graeme Jefferies had brought The Cakekitchen to town for the first time in four years.
Those who made the effort to get out and see one of this country´s finest musical exports were certaily not disappointed. Although better known in this country as a three piece. The Cakekitchen are currently just two, which is something Jefferies is obviously quite comfortable with, having started the band as a two piece back in March 1988.
The latest ingrediant in the receipe is Frenchman Jean-Yves Douet on drums, who adds a distinct flavour to the mixture. The sound itself was classic Cakekitchen - songs stripped back to the basics so they stood or fell on quality without hiding behind the trappings of "alternative" rock.
The songs themselves were more often than not, multi-layered affairs, with Jefferies´effortlessly making the jump from sweetly sentimental pop through to torrential walls of sound, while Douet managed to find rhythms few would even know existed.
The strength of it all was how the songs managed to direct shafts of light out of relative gloom, illuminating everyday moments so they became something special. The two hour set was a journey through old and new and although there seemed a bit of filler every now and then, the moments of brillance kept shining through.
Some of the duo´s latest numbers have been recorded and are due for release either late this year or early next year. An oppurtunity to have your cake and eat it to. Jeffereis may have had a slight case of bronchitis, but his rich baritone seemed hardly affected as he used it to great effect to highlight the ever changing moods evoked by the music.
Overall, damn tasty.
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