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Animal PSI

Cakes ov Light "Save Yourself" LP

"Beyond the P-Orridginal name and spray-stenciled sleeve, the musty LoFi city-folk of Cakes Ov Light settles into a differently familiar pattern with Smoggish insert of watercolors and type-written lyrics, the sole singerman murmuring over a drywall of guitar strum and four-track residue, and a female accompanist appearing almost throughout with a ghostly hollow of a harmony. “The Inward Eye” is an early success, fitting a more emotive lament ala Bird By Snow to a sawing of strep cello and a conclusion of picked notes suggesting a gypsy ballad as perhaps A Hawk and a Hacksaw might produce. “Secret Life of Plants” manages a similar Jandek gloom not aimed at any one thing in particular, the slow step of piano notes and low-impact train sounds more intelligibly married to more evocative abstractions like “he sees his reflection/activates a switch on the roof of the mouth.” The sequence of the tracks does little to retain the heavy moods emerging in these tracks, as a couple lighter, unidentified Oldhammy tracks follow – including the side’s closer, a personal favorite reminiscent an old Fluf song – on airy notes and sing-song lyrics. An extended track of fickle noises and found sounds starts the second side, the optimism of the last stretched around the corner and appearing even gladder, followed by a shorter piece of off-tune Grubbsian whimsy, completed with clip-clop tempo. Better suited to end the first side, the final track is another long track of captured sounds as architectural din and broadcast voices, a requiem of electric buzz alternating frequencies and the voice bellowing hopelessly, having never eluded to why. On black vinyl with heavy sleeve and slick insert."