ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the potential uses of irony as an analytical tool for discussing American popular music at the end of the twentieth century, using the music of Sacramento alternative rock band Cake. Cakes music offers contradictory portraits of America's glory days of the post-World War II era, simultaneously glamorizing and criticizing the symbols of American suburbia. The Cake biography on MTV.com goes so far as to say that they epitomized the postmodern, irony-drenched aesthetic of 90s geek-rock. The Beach Boys musical treatments of both cars and surfboards are identical reverberated guitar sound with soaring falsetto lines. But, the lyrical treatments are quite different. In positioning the Beach Boys as champions of California car culture, record producers were attempting to create a mythic place of carefree consumption and endless summer targeted at the nationwide youth demographic. The resultant musical product was part of a larger commercial venture to package in California to the rest of the country.
