The Sea and Cake

On the night of The Sea and Cake show at Joe’s Pub, it’s one of those Coldest Day of the Year days we’ve been hearing so much about lately. Not a bad night to see this band in particular. Their new record, One Bedroom (Thrill Jockey), certainly dabbles in extremes. The electroramble of most of the songs will definitely be one of the colder sounds I’ll hear this year. But Sam Prekop’s vocal is so breathy I can feel a hot pant warm the nape of my neck when he sings.

Once inside the club, however, it’s clear that the chilly temperatures outside serve only to make the packed house sweaty and stinky under our winter layers. Anna has accompanied me to the show; when I touch the skin on her neck, it’s damp. I tell her so, and she seems upset. We buy drinks.

When we arrived, opening act The Aluminum Group was onstage. I’d never heard them before, but I read in their bio that they’re fronted by two brothers who are both gay. I wanted to hear what they sound like.

It was just the brothers, Frank and John Navin onstage–their band elsewhere–singing something about motorcycles over a synth loop. Wearing right-angled suits and ties, they created a crisp, metallic loungey sound. Both are tall and skinny, and one is balder than the other.

In fact, looking around the audience, that’s how any two guys in the crowd could be described. Tall, skinny, one balder than the other. Almost unilaterally eyeglass wearers, also. The Sea and Cake have a stark sound and it would only follow that their fans would strive toward a stern, rigid appearance. In between the various layers of a Sea and Cake song, there’s a silence quiet enough to allow for the sound of a pin drop or the swish of a swaying hair follicle floating down the stream of a tub draining of water.

The Aluminum Group begin their next song, a "love song about drugs" they say. After a verse or so Anna says to me, "This is the kind of music that is played at an event where something else is happening." Tonight, that "something else" is hair loss.

At the end of the Aluminum Group’s set, the brothers Navin recite in unison, "Captain von Trapp, may I taste my first champagne" from The Sound of Music. I pop another Nicorette.

The Sea and Cake quickly assemble onstage. Prekop appears to have the strangest hairline in show business. There’s a shock of bush up front just above his forehead, nothing in the middle of his scalp, then business as usual on the back and sides. Publicity photos offer a 32-year-old man with a run-of-the-mill 32-year-old hairline, so perhaps a hat had done something to him earlier in the evening. It might also have been my view, since I was on tip-toes to see over the skinny, six-foot-two-inch bald man in front of me.

They open with "Four Corners," the first song off the new record. That long, long intro immediately shuts up anyone in the crowd who wants to complain about how hot they are underneath three sweaters and a Beacon’s Closet pajama top. It’s a dancey little guitar line with a very cool keyboard that, in this space, sounds like a fucked up, sleepy harmonica that’s just spinning and spinning until it finds a bed to pass out in.

After about five minutes, Prekop’s words float in, just a refrain of a sentence or two, bouncing atop the music. Soon the entire arrangement fades, leaving the words to fend for themselves until Prekop’s voice gets quieter and quieter and the guitar bursts back to life.

At the show–and throughout the new record–there’s a wobbly equilibrium. The arrangements are calculated, but the elements can be so incongruous that at any moment there’s a threat that everything will clatter apart. Or dissolve into silence. At the end of the third song, Prekop sounds as if he’s rapping over a Smiths remix, and then breaks out the strangest guitar solo. Everything that came before is just smothered.

The highlight of the night is "The Colony Room," from their previous record, Oui. A highlight because the samba sound coming from the keyboard inspires me to first grind my right thigh into Anna’s rear end, then slide my right kneecap in and out of the back of Anna’s left knee, the latter dance being the far more erotic. Prekop sings, "Welcome to the top, well I thought so," and the beautiful groove drones away.

From the new record: "Mr. F." The refrain bobs through the room: "We come back, when you say that/We come back." On the record, this song–like the entire album–is pure precision pop. As pristine as a new Formica countertop. But tonight, it’s nice to hear something so clean and perfectly groomed get dirty and mussed with the spittle from the lips and the bursts of hot breath held to a simmer in the singer’s belly.

A few songs before the set ends, Anna splits, claiming that she’s hungry, sweaty and five-foot-two. I stick around for the Aluminum Group to join The Sea and Cake for an encore of Bowie’s "Sound Vision," the track that closes out the new record as well. It’s the densest track on the record, a startling cover that sounds like a project. One imagines them toying with it in the studio for weeks and weeks, striving for more than simply "doing the song justice." They succeeded. It’s a perfect cover. And it sends our bare, beaded pates bopping happily outside where the cold wind instantly caps our skulls in a sheet of frozen sweat.