BRESSA CREETING CAKE
BRESSA CREETING CAKE (FLYING NUN)
All too rarely does a musical group come along with all the right bits intact and just enough of the wrong bits there to make you sit up and really take notice.
Emerging on the Flying Nun label in the late 90s, Bressa Creeting Cake was heralded as a young band "brimming with ideas".
Their self-titled 1997 debut album - made up of 15 tracks swinging between psychedelic and progressive rock (including single 'Nervous Wreck') received acclaim.
Having already made serious wobbles in the airwaves over student radio with a string of demo recordings.
Stretching their prodigious talents into a full album's worth of tunes, this young band revel in the chance to show us exactly what they're capable of.
And that, my friends, is a lot. Right from the calypso swing of 'Palm Singing', Bressa Creeting Cake kick into the playful pop inventiveness that stands as the album's major mood.
The vast array of styles on the album include plenty of psychedelic tinges and a hint of progressive rock, but the band don't get stuck in any one place for long over fifteen songs.
And those frivolous moments like 'Rocky Mountain' are balanced out by more earnest tracks such as 'You and I' and 'They Write Words To People Who Are Dead'.
Lyrically, both Edmund Cake and Geoff Creeting string words together with no small amount of flair.
Whether it be the Hungarian/Mongolian hybrid language in 'Zenax', the imaginative leaps of syntax and imagery in 'Rocky Mountain' and 'Egyptian Tanker', or the strange tales told in the likes of 'A Chip That Sells Millions' or 'An Early Microscope', the use of words and meaning adds depth to the tunes here.
Geoff Maddock (then going by the stage name Geoff Creeting) and Joel Wilton, went on to form pop-folk band Goldenhorse alongside Kirsten Morelle.
Ed Cake has released a solo album and produced Don McGlashan, Neil Finn and The Brunettes.