Lisa Loeb

Cake and Pie (A & M)
by Jamie Kiffel

Some relationships go bad. Others go funny. Others just go. Like the uncomfortable mixture of “okay” and “painful,” inertially hoping for improvemement but never quite managing – this is the focus of Cake and Pie, a collection of unsteady pop love (?) songs. Like relationships that are too comfortable to leave, offer no change, and thus freeze the participants at a certain phase in their lives, these songs are sweet and singable but always feel a touch left behind, as if they were penned by a younger artist who didn’t allow her style to mature (in fact, they were written several years ago).

Lisa Loeb‘s sound is lovely and gently reflective, but her music seems not to learn from her diary-like lyrics: Examine what you’ve done before, then hone your work. Her sound needs the bite of wisdom to set it apart from its – and its writer’s – past.
(www.lisaloeb.com)