**1/2 Cake

FASHION NUGGET

(Capricorn)

Cake are a carnival of all that bops, from NASCAR-flavored country twang and cigarette-smoked red-velvet lounge music to mirror-balled bell-bottomed disco. This Sacramento quintet, who probably don't have a stage-diving story or a pair of Doc Martens among them, sing about love and the lack of it, race cars, and rock and roll -- mixing it all together into a recipe that tastes like a Southwestern Soul Coughing. Singer John McCrea sounds like a dusted David Lowery when he mumbles above mariachi-spiked trumpets on Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" (one of three covers, along with Doris Day's "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" and Willie Nelson's "Sad Songs and Waltzes"). "Frank Sinatra" and "Race Car Ya-Ya's" showcase Cake's quicker lounge bite.

-- Jonathan Vena

(Cake open for Counting Crows at the Orpheum tonight and tomorrow, November 14 and 15.)