Reunited with multi-instrumentalist
Lary Seven
, her collaborator on
the Beautiful People
project,
Jarboe
on her second solo album again clearly demonstrates her musical abilities as being no less adept than those of her
Swans
bandmate/partner
Gira
(whose own solo debut album,
Drainland
, was released in concert along with
Sacrificial Cake
). All songs were written wholly by her, excepting a weirdly jaunty, live radio-session take of the
track
"My Buried Child,"
accompanied only by
on acoustic guitar. Unlike the constantly varied
Thirteen Masks
album,
Cake
has more of a unified feel, being mostly moody and mysterious with echoed or muffled percussion, and it's all done in a distinctly different way than
' at-times obsessively structured epic pounding.
"Ode to V,"
for instance, relies on an understated approach throughout, with low keyboard tones and percussive shuffling floating beneath her husky spoken-word recitation and wordless backing vocals. Another quality of her music that gets good play is her ear for, and creative work with, samples;
"Surgical Saviour"
includes some wonderfully odd reworkings of crowd and orchestral snippets. While familiar religious and sexual imagery and scenarios dominate the lyrics, a more general playfulness appears as well, on such numbers like
"Not Logical,"
a recitation of desirable qualities that are indeed anything but logical, and on the one actual rocker on the disc,
"Deflowered,"
a wickedly barbed analysis of what it takes to play the music industry game as a female rock star, along with what you lose along the way. Another equally striking lyrical thread emerges in fairy-tale-like scenarios, as in
"Troll Lullaby"
and
"Yum-Yab"
; both sound playful and quite disturbing, in the best children's story fashion. Not merely an accomplished statement of musical independence,
is simply a great album. It should be of interest to anyone who's unafraid of moving beyond the musical norm. ~ Ned Raggett