**1/2 Cake Like

BRUISER QUEEN

(Vapor)

Heads were scratched and foreheads wrinkled when NYC's Cake Like -- first record produced by Girls Against Boys' Eli Janney and released import-only on John Zorn's Japanese Avant label -- were chosen for second-stage duties on this year's H.O.R.D.E. Tour. On 1994's Delicious, Cake Like balanced the most jagged, atonal impulses of aggressive indie-core and start-stop rocking propulsion with Kerry Kinney's stream-of-consciousness recovered-memory monologues going from Prozac-induced understatement to terrified bed-wetting shriek. So, like, did someone confuse 'em with the "Going the Distance" guys or what?

Bruiser Queen, just released on Neil Young's Vapor imprint (aha!), covers the same childhood-trauma territory that made tunes like "Bum Leg" and "Suck" on the first disc such a discomforting listen. "Mr. Fireman," a staple of their live set, is either a desperate song about a house burning down or a really funny one about an arsonist with a firefighter fetish -- "I called you 15 fucking minutes ago! My apartment house is on fire! Bring your goddamn truck and some water!", Kinney screams. Elsewhere Bruiser is more melodically and structurally refined. But its mostly distortionless guitar lulls are kind of a letdown after the primitive guitar lacerations of Delicious. Scratch, scratch. Wrinkle, wrinkle.

-- Carly Carioli

(Cake Like play upstairs at the Middle East with openers Galveston and Claudia Malibu this Monday, June 30; call 864-EAST.)