As the title suggests, it's a complex, two-sided affair, frivolous and blithe (‘Nothing', She's Gonna Break Some Heart Tonight'), gentle as springtime (‘Please Come To Boston'), pragmatic and resourceful (‘Sacrifice', ‘It's Nothing To Me'), acerbic (‘Fred Freud', ‘White People Thing') and touching (Lee's tribute to granddaughter, Phaedra - a reprise of ‘Some Velvet Morning').  Full text...

Lee Hazlewood - singer, songwriter, arranger, producer, wit and curmudgeon - has announced that Cake or Death will be his last-ever release. The septugenarian cowboy, no doubt aware of the public's perception of him, as well as the inevitable march of time, has therefore pulled out all the stops to make sure he - literally - leaves 'em happy.  Full text...

Hazlewood's smoke-stained baritone purrs darkly as he surveys the tattered debris of Western culture in songs such as "Fred Freud", a wry waltz around psychotherapy that acknowledges "no kisses or posies can kill your neuroses"; "White People Thing", a withering portrait of the small mercies and racial paranoia of the suburban bourgeoisie, ironically built on the "Smokestack Lightning" riff; and "Baghdad Knights", in which a GI explains, "sometimes we fight, sometimes we run - it's just like playing football, with a gun."  Full text...

Cake Or Death is a bit of a scrapbook really; a time capsule to enable those who remain once Hazlewood's gone to get the measure of the man. For a gent of 78, his voice is in great form. It still drawls with all the suggestion of an unseen but twinkling eye, but it's the songs themselves that sell this record.  Full text...

Cake or Death could well be Hazlewood's 30th album-- the discography is a little sketchy-- but unhappily it's almost certainly his last, since he was diagnosed earlier this year with renal cancer.  Full text...

There are duets with Swedish jazz singers and German actors, satirical pokes at rednecks and Republicans, a mothballed version of Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made For Walkin', all smoke and twang, and a peculiarly moving reading of his classic Sinatra duet Some Velvet Morning, featuring his eight-year-old granddaughter Phaedra.  Full text...

Consequently, "Cake Or Death" feels more like a curate's-egg of a coda than a useful entrée to Hazlewood's work: a send-off, in other words, true to the spirit of the self-styled "Ol' Grey-Haired Sonofabitch".  Full text...