[This review was originally published in Badaboom Gramaphone #3 and appears here with permission.]
Formed as Breast Secreting Cake, this young New Zealand trio quickly found themselves signed and releasing a records on their home-country flagship label, Flying Nun. Bressa Creeting Cake suffuses a flaky whimsy into the usually self-impressed sound of ornate pop music. Starting with non-angst-Cure xylophone play on “Palm Singing,” the album touches on arena rock operatics (“Greasy Grandma” and “Papa People”), ’70s wispy mysticism (“You & I”) and folk balladry (“Rotten Old Bitch”). Meanwhile, “Rocky Mountain” manages to pile harmony cliché over guitar riff cliché over hand-clapping cliché, making them all sound joyously refreshing again. Bressa Creeting Cake’s unselfconscious updating of Queen avoids the quagmire of smugness where like-minded groups often get stuck and offers a path towards the return of precious and precocious rock meant for millions.