Powerpop CD Review: Red Jacket Mine – Someone Else’s Cake

Judging by the songs on Someone Else’s Cake, its not hard to figure out where Lincoln Barr and Red Jacket Mine get their inspiration. Sounds like they raided the Stiff Records archives.

“Amy” is a pleasant, catchy powerpop song to start off the disc. “Nickle & Dime” sounds like it could have been an outtake from an old Any Trouble record. “Ron Nasty” has a, well, nasty hook and some great Harrison influenced guitars. The horns on “Engineer” are pretty cool and “Skint City” heads back into Clive Gregson territory. And “Novelty’s Gone” has the feel of a Squeeze song.

The CD takes a pleasant and more soulful turn with “Better to be Broken Than Blind”, perhaps my favorite song here. Then we go full tilt into Lincoln Barr’s Elvis Costello record collection as the title song “Someone Else’s Cake” sounds like something off of Get Happy. And, like most of the songs on Get Happy, it kicks ass. Things get even better with “Have You Got a Permit to Preach on This Corner”, which I figure is either Barr’s George Jones tribute or his best attempt to channel Costello via Jones’ “Stranger in the House”.

Someone Else’s Cake is a pretty good powerpop record. Its chock full of good songs, yet it doesn’t quite demand my attention the way some other Seattle bands’ albums have, bands like Tripwires or Braden Blake (if we go back a few years). Being from the great northwest, it also means we won’t likely get the opportunity to see them perform live in these parts. And that sucks.