Cake is back, and has some new tricks up its sleeve

With a mix of styles ranging from ska to crooner, jazz to rockabilly, Cake briskly rose to fame under the 1990s’ wonderfully broad and diverse “alternative rock” umbrella.

Vocalist John McCrea spouted out witty, non-sequitur lyrics that somehow meshed with the music but still broke away from the norm.

Cake was the perfect band for the decade, when genres were crossing over more than ever and movements like swing were coming back to popularity.

Almost 20 years after the band’s formation, things aren’t the same in the music world. The alt-rock umbrella splintered into dozens of subgenres throughout the last decade and lo-fi sensibilities dethroned the once-resurgent big band sound. Cake’s witty lyrical stylization could be seen as superfluous among today’s pop-culture-laden, post-ironic acts.

But now, more than five years since their last album, Cake is back with a new release and a surprising new sound. Showroom of Compassion is unmistakably a Cake album, but with its slower tempo, contemplative content and use of different instruments, it clearly stands apart from the band’s prior releases.

Part of the new sound comes from previously unused instruments such as the acoustic piano. This move toward a less electric ambience gives Showroom of Compassion a rawer element. Instead of fast-paced, swing-revival dance music, the album, and the band, aim for a more methodical, precise style. The focus isn’t how the listener interacts with the music, but what the music actually says.

The opening song, “Federal Funding,” is a surprisingly stripped down, quiet song. The lyrics are witty, but the music is not as bouncy as Cake’s standard material.

The second track, “Long Time,” is much more engaging, picking up the pace with the band seeming more energized. A mix of tropicalia and ballad, the song is a solid taste of the band’s new sound.

Even the fast paced songs have a contemplative touch: mellow, but still driven by a pulsing beat and that jazz-esque flare of horns.

The album’s fifth track, “Mustache Man,” is the first song that really sounds like classic Cake. Featuring a soaring trumpet, the song adds background shouts from the rest of the band and random snippets of unintelligible words while still sounding smooth.

There’s a sleek, cohesive element from the band on display here — that big band sound that Cake does very well.

The song is also a great showcase for McCrea’s wordplay. He paints characters in quick, oddball sketches, like the song’s titular man: He is that politician that is practicing his speech / he is racing, he is pacing, he is sleeping on his feet. Along with the first single, “Sick of You,” Cake demonstrates that they can still create worthy dance music.

There’s a definite sense the album title sets the tone of the songs, with a strong lyrical focus on comfort and empathy. Many songs focus on getting over rough times or lost relationships, like the downcast “Got to Move” and “What’s Now is Now.”

But McCrea’s lyrical wit disappears entirely in the next track, “Teenage Pregnancy.” Entirely devoid of lyrics, the instrumental song seems to be trying to tell a story simply through the music. Piano-driven, the song goes from bouts of low tempo to swells of emotion-riddled notes.

“Easy to Crash” signals a change of style that continues throughout the second half of the album. It has a harder edge and feels more like a modern alternative rock track. The guitar and percussion are more emphasized, and it’s only the electric keyboard section that feels really Cake-ish.

To break up the sound, “Bound Away” introduces a folk-country hybrid, with the more jazzy elements of Cake’s style completely missing. It’s a travelogue of sorts, with the narrator heading abroad to get away from some unfortunate incident. It’s an outlier of a song but it sets the tone for the remainder of the album.

The album closer, “Italian Guy,” is a return to McCrea’s character-crafting lyricism, if not the dance elements of the rest of the band’s trademark style. It’s a fitting final track, though, and a mix of the old and the new.

Showroom of Compassion is a puzzling entry in Cake’s discography, but it’s still a hopeful sign for the band. McCrea and company prove that they can and have grown as musicians. They’re more experimental, though experimental for Cake is the inverse of how most bands would change things up.

It might not be the iconic sound that diehard fans remember from Cake, but it’s evolutionary.

Showroom of Compassion is a solid album, one that can still get listeners dancing, but also make them stop and think.