Listen: Cake Confirm First Album in 13 Years, Perform New Song “Billionaire in Space”
Don’t call it a comeback.
After 13 long years, Cake have finally confirmed progress on a new studio album. Though we’re still waiting on any official release information or new studio recordings, the icons of ‘90s and aughts alternative rock made a real splash with their recent appearance on KSTX; in a conversation with the host, frontman John McCrea–newly bearded, pictured in sandals, a cat tee and an ironic trucker hat–confirmed an upcoming studio album the band is hoping to complete by the end of 2024. Just after, the quintet set up a live debut of the brand-new song “Billionaire in Space.”
Captured in cramped confines for the Texas station’s “Live from the Freight Elevator” series, Cake’s latest is a hazily orbiting view of a world on fire from the cush, “ergonomically designed” bucket seat of an escaping oligarch’s space shuttle. In the band’s inimitable fashion, it’s a sharp-witted, densely descriptive bit of unpretentious commentary delivered with humor and charm that undercut the bleak subject, wrapped up in a catchy, deceptively straightforward melody. It’s bound to ring in the heads of fans everywhere until the next update.
Since 2011’s Showroom of Compassion, Cake has been mighty quiet. Before today, the band dropped just four new tracks in just shy of a decade and a half: the 2018 twin singles “Sinking Ship” and “Age of Aquarius,” a tribute cover of Roger Miller’s “Reincarnation” (which has been all but wiped from the internet) and “Hold You Responsible,” released earlier in October for NOISE FOR NOW’s benefit compilation SONGS FOR SEX. Needlessly, then, “Billionaire in Space” makes an impression–but Cake’s reign all those years ago is hardly forgotten.
As for the album, we can only hope to see it soon. Cake’s recent steady touring and two new recordings appear as a definite ramp up, but as guitarist Xan McCurdy confirmed in a smoke break outside KSTX, “We like to keep our fans confused.”
Listen to “Billionaire in Space” below.
