Showroom of Compassion by Cake

Showroom of Compassion, Cake's sixth album, landed on January 11, 2011, their first since 2004's Pressure Chief and the longest wait yet between Cake records. The Sacramento band made the gap count by doing it all themselves: they produced it and put it out on their own Upbeat Records, their first studio album released independently. The payoff was a debut at number one on the Billboard 200, their first ever, on 44,000 copies in the opening week.

The sound hasn't budged much, and that's the point. John McCrea still deals out dry wisecracks in his deadpan drawl, Vince DiFiore's trumpet still blares across the top, Xan McCurdy lays down fuzzy, hooky guitar and Gabriel Nelson's bass does its busy, knotty thing over Paulo Baldi's drums, with Moog burbling in the cracks. "Sick of You" and "Long Time" carry the tunes, and former guitarist Greg Brown drops in on "Bound Away", his first time on a Cake record since Fashion Nugget in 1996.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.