The Sea and Cake "Up on Crutches"

The Sea and Cake covering "Sound and Vision" (on their last full-length over four years ago) felt like one of those duh moments, when a band re-does a song that essentially encapsulates what's become its own stylistic M.O. The Cake's version wasn't anywhere near either "killing" or "owning" Bowie's untouchable original, but it still managed to feel pretty damn perfect regardless. The Sea and Cake have, with a good degree of cleverness and distinction, evolved into a group that relies on an unconscious appeal to the senses, creating impressionistic, experential, blurry soundscapes that wallow in the ("blue, blue electric blue") atmosphere created through the confluence of Sam Prekop's impossibly self-possessed vocals, guitars that smear like rain on sidewalk chalk, and drums that fizz in the manner of miniature cannon blasts. Pitchfork's Paul Thompson described them as "the scented candles of indie rock," and while that makes me giggle with its appropriateness, I'd adapt his definition to the broader and less-snarky, if not lamer, "mood music," inasmuch as the band is so great at locking into a vibe and refusing to exit a determined dynamic range. Here's the best thing, too: Everybody is clearly, without doubt, their best-yet album, crystallizing the aforementioned aesthetic tendencies started more or less in earnest 10 years ago on The Fawn. The new one opens with the just-wonderful, reluctantly cinematic "Up On Crutches" (mp3), in which Prekop's emotive vocal tics ("ahhh yessss" "ahh yeah") feel like a more debonair Britt Daniel, and seem to describe the gentle struggle between the pleasures inherent in constant motion with the irritation that comes with occasional inertia. The song progresses through three stages: the first is keyed up scene-setting, followed by the second, a disquieted interplay between thubbing floor-toms and chiming, freeing guitars, and the third, climactic section, all scattered and elevated relief. From what, it doesn't matter at all.

Order Everybody from Thrill Jockey here.