Free Cake for Every Creature give themselves away in their name. The songs that populate their debut album, Talking Quietly of Anything with You, are brief, bright-hued shades of twee pop. Electric guitars at their most basic, lyrics and vocals so sincere and sweet that the tongue numbs to them.
But the thing is, Free Cake are owning all that. There is something wonderfully unpretentious about singer Katie Bennett’s voice that keeps me from rolling my eyes when she sings about “being 22 years old, drawing chubby cows in her diary.” Okay, maybe there’s a little eye-rolling, but it’s done with fondness.
The best moments do happen when the band steps away from ukulele-strummin’ cliches: “So Much Strange to Give” is the most mature and most satisfying track, name-checking Big Star and reflecting on the tedium of the growing pains of adulthood. Alongside the lead single “For You”, it’s a stand-out on a mellow, mixed but promising album.