The Jimmy Cake
Tough Love
[Penske Recordings]
My first exposure to The Jimmy Cake’s latest hulking audiary monolith, Tough Love, was at this year’s Body&Soul festival. In an example of festival programming done right, the venerated, shape-shifting post-rock troupe took to the stage at 2am and proceeded to plough through the two 20+ minute slabs that make up their latest release. By about 15 minutes in, the potency of the ensemble’s latest incarnation was abundantly clear. Their cocktail of patient, texturally-focussed synth noodling and gut-quaking, feedback-driven brutality left the tent housing their performance markedly less densely populated though wholly more engaged than before the sextet took up position.
Those who remained fell comfortably into two camps; ecstatic devotees captivated by the an established favourite operating at the peak of their powers and a handful of aghast blow-ins who (to take the charitable reading of their dilated pupils, slack jaws and incessant clapping along to an imagined 4/4 pulse) had given themselves over to the transportive quality of these gargantuan and intoxicating compositions.
Where so many of their domestic, primarily instrumental contemporaries err towards a heartstring-tugging bombast that relentlessly, oft-interminably, build and build towards a point of mania characterised by little else than its bigness – The Jimmy Cake, in their experience and acumen, realise hidden depths are most potent when revealed through listener concentration rather than shoved down the proverbial gizzard. Sludgier than their last (also brilliant) offering, Master – The Jimmy Cake continue to offer much more than mere confection.
Like This? Try These:
Boredoms – Vision Creation Newsun
Om – God is Good
Fixity – The Things in the Room
Words – Danny Wilson
