Cake - Short Skirt/ Long Jacket

Published Tuesday, January 18, 2005 by Abby | E-mail this post

“With fingernails that shine like justice/ And a voice that is dark like tainted glass/ She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack/ She’s touring the facilities and picking up the slack.”

All hail the quirky mid-nineties American altrocker! (right-click download as usual m'dears)

You see, back in the day there were none of these anorexic indie boys with their artful fringes and skinny-pinstripe blazers. (Britpop! Does! Not! Count!) Oh no. Think unashamed geek vogue, not i-D ready coverstars. Think bowling shirts before the emo boys got hold of them. Think facial hair that wasn’t carefully tended, and primary colour videos with random furry animals.

The joy!

And this is simply irresistible; all suave lounge funk and arch drawling. The horn section and meandering bassline which smoothly amble to nowhere in particular! The low called line repetition and sheer nonsense of lyricism! Hell, it even has ‘nah nah nah’s peppering its uber-cool arrangement! What more could a girl of discerning taste require from her superior pop gods?

This is certainly the song for shifting fashionably on the spot in that retro nightspot, post-ironic umbrella cocktail in hand, maraschino cherry swirling on tongue.

1 Responses to “Cake - Short Skirt/ Long Jacket”

Anonymous on 3:32 PM

"smoothly amble to nowhere in particular!"

I looked it up:

"the sprightly tarts, the men arguing with a hundred Voilàs in the cafés, the couples drifting, head to head, toward the satisfactory inexpensiveness of nowhere."
(F Scott Fitzgerald- Tender is the night)iAmMojo