{"product_id":"cake-prolonging-the-magic","title":"Cake - Prolonging the Magic","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy 1998 Cake had a problem most bands would envy. Fashion Nugget had made them famous on the strength of one enormous single, and the obvious move was to write another one. Prolonging the Magic does not do that. Instead John McCrea took the band somewhere dustier and stranger, leaning into pedal steel, country phrasing and a kind of sunburnt Californian melancholy that the earlier records only hinted at.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Never There\" is the closest thing here to a straightforward hit, two minutes and change of clipped guitar and a chorus about somebody who is never around, and it became the band's most-played radio song. Around it the record spreads out. \"Satan Is My Motor\" opens the album on a lurching riff and a lyric about being powered by something you probably should not be powered by. \"Sheep Go to Heaven\" delivers the most quotable line in the catalogue with a completely straight face. \"Mexico\" and \"Walk On By\" bring in Greg Vincent's pedal steel, and \"Guitar\" features a musical saw, which tells you how far the band was willing to wander.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe lineup was in flux, with Chuck Prophet and Jim Campilongo covering guitar duties across the record, and that rotation gives the album a looser, more varied texture than its predecessor. McCrea produced it himself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the 2023 RCA reissue on 180-gram black vinyl, remastered and packaged with a printed inner sleeve. The Cake album that rewards repeat listening the most.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"AMS","offers":[{"title":"Vinyl","offer_id":47593241510050,"sku":null,"price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0633\/5024\/3490\/files\/leglp14061__44984.webp?v=1787887130","url":"https:\/\/staticatx.com\/products\/cake-prolonging-the-magic","provider":"Static ATX","version":"1.0","type":"link"}