Like many 1990s indie bands, the Sea and Cake made a crucial decision around the end of the decade to get smoother. Not that their early records were ragged things. Not at all. Released when the first generation of lo-fi acts still defined (more or less) the very sound of indie, 1994's self-titled debut and 1995's Nassau and The Biz were mostly gentle and very lush. The Sea and Cake made sweet and accessible music-- singer Sam Prekop's just-out-of-bed voice is one of the most immediately ingratiating in indie rock-- that was pristinely captured and expertly played.
These were also guitar records, though, and the hint of raw electric amplification that remained was a faint reminder that these guys had their roots not in jazz clubs or world music festivals but in the 80s post-punk underground. By 1997's The Fawn, any lingering fuzz and rock rambunctiousness had gone. Like the post-rock bands they always found themselves bracketed with, the Sea and Cake drew from a broad range of sources beyond trad guitar rock, but they also wrote hummable, heartsick songs rather than instrumental jams or sound-art collages. Yet as they adopted late post-rock's loungey smoothness and melodic/rhythmic repetition, their records threatened to become the same sort of avant-pop background music.
The Sea and Cake have never seen that trajectory as a problem, and indeed they've continued to release intermittently brilliant records in this vein. In his review of 2008's Car Alarm, Pitchfork's Mark Richardson rightly claimed this same-ness as one of the band's virtues; if they never wildly experiment they also never stray from their strengths long enough to potentially fall on their faces. When you buy a Sea and Cake record, you can be assured a certain amount of comforting familiarity (down much to Prekop's breathy delivery stamping every record with the band's trademark) and quality control (having a top-shelf producer for a drummer helps when making music where every element sounding crisp and placed just-right in the mix is key). But one of the nicest things about The Moonlight Butterfly is that it's the first record in a long time where the Sea and Cake seem to be stretching out and trying new things. They're also getting back to the warm sound of guys in a practice space rather than an antiseptic sound-lab.
Make no mistake, it's obviously a Sea and Cake album from the moment Prekop's just-louder-than-a-whisper voice comes on. They still make the kind of rare rock that's both inventive and so laid-back you feel like you should be supine while listening. Their music is most perfect first thing in the morning or late at night, when you're too sleepy for something louder, uglier, or more complexly obtrusive. Opener "Covers" might be the platonic Sea and Cake tune, split evenly between the lovely live-band jitters of their first three records and the slick programmed-sounding swoon of the stuff that came later. It's all there: Prekop's drowsy melodies delivered in that inimitable longing sigh, the precise and sparkling interplay between the jangling rhythm guitar and heart-tugging little bits of melodic filigree, and a lite motorik pulse that gives the whole song a frictionless, soaring quality. "Up on the North Shore" is a dead-ringer for something off one of those first three rock-centric albums, like the Feelies drained of all anxiety until just a joyful bounce remains, with breaks for the closest this band ever gets to guitar heroics. (Not very close, in case you were wondering.) "Monday" hearkens back to the jazz-pop and samba percussion that drove Prekop's classic 1999 solo debut, and breathes in a way that much of the band's layered and synth-heavy post-Fawn work doesn't.
But departures are more interesting and more striking than the chances for fans to reminisce about the old days. That doesn't always mean they're better, of course. It's curiously fun to hear the band take a left-turn into instrumental Moroder-esque electro-pop on the title track, but it's still feels like more of a one-off experiment than a new direction, or even of a piece with the rest of Moonlight's more human touch. If they'd actually turned it into a song, or developed this sound across the whole album, it might be a different story. "Inn Keeping", the album's 10-minute centerpiece, is a much more assured swerve into new territory. It takes the Neu!-like rhythms all over different parts of Butterfly and stretches them into a true Neu! epic, complete with an uneasiness that's surprising for this most buoyant of bands but sacrifices none of the prettiness.
But at just six songs, even with one really long tune, there's a certain slightness to Butterfly. You may drift through recent Sea and Cake records more than you engage with them, but you still tend to want to drift for longer than a half-hour. Nevertheless it suggests the band is still master of the niche it's carved, and not out of new ideas just yet. Almost two decades into its career, those are nice surprises for those who've been following along the whole way.
