The Sea and Cake have never trafficked in revolutions. Those quick to decry a foolish consistency forget that there's an angel in the details-- an angel of our better natures, let's say, urging the hard elegance over the easy noise. To charge The Sea and Cake with rehashing the same album amounts to deriding Monet for painting the same haystacks. Not only is it wrong, it has simply missed the point. It's strange that an album as demure as Oui will have such a bitterly polarizing effect; the skirmish over the fine line between continuity and paralysis seem so irrelevant to the grace and sophistication of this work.
This album's October 3rd release date already presents a small parable for Oui; it's a day consecrated to Saint Radiohead. But superficially, the day marks the release of two eagerly anticipated albums; it concludes a three-year absence of serious studio output from both bands. By way of contrast, Kid A puts its predecessors through the dream cuisinart; it turns oedipally on its forebears. Oui, however, recalls past Sea and Cake albums like lost loves: fondness tempered with regret. Some will search Oui for signs of the radical innovation and disruption than lend Kid A its oneiric vitality, but they'll search in vain. Rather, the studied affirmative of Oui is sober in the face of the past, almost sad and not quite dreaming.
The Sea and Cake were born middle-aged, their respective musical puberties farmed out among a handful of preceding bands. The self-titled debut always sounded seasoned and precise. Its various musical styles are fused with such mastery and deliberation that one would never have believed that the band was intended as a one-off project. 1995's Nassau regressed into a newfound adolescence: Sam Prekop yowled; John McEntire set aside the brushes for hard sticks; Archer Prewitt's rhythmic strum dominated the album. Remember the sloppy jangle of "Nature Boy" or the snaky garage fusion of "A Man Who Never Sees a Pretty Girl That He Doesn't Love Her a Little", the churchy farfisa in "The Cantina"? But even amidst the regression and brilliant irresponsibility of Nassau sat the shattering seaside dolor of "Parasol", recalling an earlier clarity, and virtually anticipating the grievous composure of Oui.
The shrill yelps and jagged swing of Nassau and The Biz have faded into memory. Electronics have come to play a greater role in the band's more recent output. Whereas the electronic elements of earlier work never really moved beyond warbling afterthoughts, The Fawn was virtually engulfed in twittering synths and subtle machinery. The title track was perhaps the most artificial work of the band's entire catalog heretofore: drum machine, synthesizer loops and the sweep of programmed symphonics. The spontaneity of Eric Claridge's understated bassline served to single- handedly save that track from seeming a pale recursive remix of itself. The jazz-like spontaneity of earlier efforts was replaced with methodical studio construction. The album was lovely but somehow artificial. The abysmal Jim O'Rourke-molested remix EP follow-up, Two Gentlemen set new standards for warmed-over ambient pablum, virtually anticipating the entire Casino Versus Japan discography and receding limply into obscurity and dim regret. When was the last time you heard someone mention "The Cheech Wizard Meets Baby Ultraman in the Cool Blue Cave?" Please.
Oui is less an apology than an awakening. A lesser band might have recanted with knee-jerk speed, hooking a fistful of lite-funk Nassau-style tunes up to the jumper cables. Instead, the Sea and Cake disappeared into painting and solo pursuits, emerging three years later with Oui like the afternoon sun in your eyes. They haven't revived the improvisational flex of their early canon; if anything Oui is the most meticulously produced thing they've done. And the electronics remain virtually omnipresent-- to strange effect, since the melodies are reminiscent of the very low-tech jazz-croon of Sam Prekop's 1999 solo album. But nothing is taken for granted. Intimacy reigns. The fact that it all holds together is astounding.
McEntire's drumming is inhumanly nimble, almost approaching robotics. Beneath the boss-level video game music frenzy of "Afternoon Speaker", the effect is digital clockwork. Prekop oozes, "Wasn't that a putdown?" ingenuously over Prewitt's incredibly rhythmic lilt. It's pure synchronicity, but driven. The instrumental, "You Beautiful Bastard", ruminates like late summer; the music exhales. Paul Mertens' faint string arrangements meld with Prewitt's sighing wah-wah lines; Claridge's listless bassline seems to stand in for the narrative.
While initially promising to be a predictable nod to vogue Brazilian music, "The Colony Room" subsumes its hints of tropicalia into a rising chorus of Prekop's disjointed lyric of fortune-cookieisms and found conversation: "Welcome to the top, well, I thought so/ Bring it to an end, without hassle/ No disaster, I guarantee." The very Tortoise-esque "The Leaf" fuses gamelan music with blue-eyed soul. Prekop's voice flutters out like sweet cigarette smoke: "I'm waiting till the winter dies, skillfully." Again, "Two Dolphins" flirts with tropicalia but subverts the sound with languid electronics and McEntire's too-tight percussion. Prekop stage-whispers the line that could serve as the motto for Oui: "And I know that it sounds right/ Many miles away/ Paradox stay forever/ Celebrate this day."
Oui is stunning easy listening in recession, but up close it's genius. The production, the arrangements, the instrumentation, the electronics would sound cumbersome in the hands of the unexperienced, but The Sea and Cake fuse these elements with economy and care. If Oui doesn't erupt like an outright revolution, it's only because the band makes it look too easy. Great art doesn't always come like a shot heard 'round the world. And maybe that's the mark of a truly brilliant work of music: it's explosive inspiration masquerading as a lullaby.
