Almost everything about this fourteenth Hello Venray is pleasantly concise. The song titles, the tracks (which only once clock out over four minutes) and the album itself. Barely 35 minutes long, the album nevertheless ranges from jazz to heavy metal. Thematically then. 'Jazz has got my sympathy instead of disapproval,' sings the always funny frontman Henk Koorn in the opening song (about the funeral
… of the Dutch jazz drummer Louis Debij), which ends in one of those delightful Neil Young solos that Koorn has now patented. And in Nerds, after an intro that ostentatiously winks at AC/DC's Thunderstruck: "When a band plays heavy metal they often say respect, when a band plays heavy metal, there's a band name on their chest. Then again, in the beautifully subdued At Night, Koorn sounds like Lou Reed. Unlike on its rather unbalanced predecessor Where Is The Funky Party? (2017), however, Coffee And Cake sounds like a whole. A downright clever record, with which the trio from The Hague thirty years after their breakthrough at Pinkpop '92 proves they still have plenty of reason to exist. (RME)more
