The word that I would apply to the experience of listening to a new Sea and Cake album is ‘comfortable’. The band have been putting out consistently pleasant and subtly ingratiating records for their entire career, and this one is no different. Lushly recorded and produced (with the assistance of the rest of the band) as always by drummer John McEntire, also of Chicagoan post-rock luminaries Tortoise, this collection of 10 tunes builds on the gentle experimentation of last year’s Moonlight Butterfly, which incorporated some electronic elements that were new to the bands sonic range, as well as expanding upon their usual 3-4 minute long song structure on ‘The Inn Keeper’, the longest track The Sea and Cake have ever released.
Many of the songs on Runner began life as synth/sequencer ideas in guitarist and vocalist Sam Prekop’s home studio, rather than the usual guitar-based writing process. After this they underwent the transformation into full band pieces, while on the surface retaining some of the electronic trappings of their previous existence. The forms of the songs themselves were also indelibly stamped by this new songwriting process. Nonetheless, Runner is unmistakably a Sea and Cake record, fusing the best of late 80s/early 90s indie pop (think Slumberland and Sarah Records) with the languid guitar noodling that has become the band’s calling card.
Opener ‘On and On’ combines My Bloody Valentine-esque tremolo swoops, gentle distortion and a dreamily melancholic chorus, resulting in an instant shoegaze/indie pop classic, and perhaps the most urgent moment on this otherwise rather relaxed record. The most electronics-drenched point on the album arrives with ‘The Invitations’, the first half of which comprises only fuzzy sheets of synthetic modulations and Prekop’s half-whispered incantations. Elsewhere, the title track calls to mind the spaciness of OK Computer-era Radiohead, bringing to a close another set of unhurried musical meanderings from a band who seem at ease with the formula they’ve stumbled upon.
— Ivan Deasy
