ALTERNATIVE PRESS
THE CAKEKITCHEN Time Flowing Backwards
The songs on Time Flowing Backwards are like slivers of uncooked spagetti - raw, brittle and frail - and you fear that they might snap and fall between the orange glow of the metal coils on an electric stove. This album is as near genius as it can get. Itīs simply terrifying how quickly the water came to the boil. A fabled music hero of New Zealand and the main dude of the Cakekitchen, Graeme Jeffereis has been on the scene since 1982. Though I never heard them, Jefferies has apparently released a solo album and performed in two groups before releasing a Cakekitchen EP (vinyl only) on the Flying Nun label in 1989. My ears were indeed of a virgin state. Upon first listen to Time Flowing Backwards, Jefferies sounded like a mutant Steve Kilbey (of Church renown) on a lethal dose of barbiturates (he still does on Machines), but by the third listen I was captured by the hypnotic delivery of the vocals as I read the lyrics. Though the songs throughout the album display a diversity of styles, one of the best cuts Silence of the Sirens, has much the same hurdy-gurdy flavor as the softer moments on the Velvetīs banana album. The dissonance is subtle with an organ or violin wrapping the gentle guitar hooks in a hazy mist as bassist Rachael King adds harmony. While the song description may make the groups sound seem merely pretty, itīs only because their are no easy labels for the Cakekitchen, and thatīs probably the highest criticism a band can receive. With Time Flowing Backwards, The Cakekitchen are really on to something. Their songs document the complete mastery of mood through understatement in a way that Nick Drake, Spaceman 3, and early R.E.M. once achieved. I could drop a few more names, but words seem inadequate in describing what The Cakekitchen have accomplished. (Homestead, P.O.Box 800, Rockville Centre, NY 115710800)
- Pal Norman
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