Personnel: Archer Prewitt (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Sam Prekop (vocals, guitar); John McEntire (keyboards, vibraphone, drums, percussion); Eric Claridge (keyboards).

Additional personnel: Ken Champion (pedal steel guitar).

Recording information: Key Club, Benton, Harbor, MI; Soma.

Photographer: Sam Prekop.

Fans bank on the shimmering, gorgeous pop of the Sea & Cake, and 2007's EVERYBODY will disappoint no one. There aren't any radical departures from the band's smooth, meticulously constructed brand of highbrow sonic candy, but EVERYBODY bears less overt experimentation than previous efforts, placing the emphasis instead on pop hooks and arrangements that wash over the listener like waves. In fact, EVERYBODY more closely resembles a 1970s soft-rock album than it does the music of, say, Tortoise (Sea & Cake drummer John McEntire's post-rock main squeeze).

But EVERYBODY is unmistakably an album made by first-rate musicians with a vision. Opener "Up on Crutches" is a sunny, bouncy tune that plays like a summer breeze. The fuzz guitar tones in "Crossing Lines" offset the breathy melody, while "Coconut" spins a plaintive tune against chimed notes. In short, the Sea & Cake make pleasurable pop for smart people, and EVERYBODY--bright, sweet, and beautifully textured--is as pleasurable as anything they've done.

You could call the Sea and Cake classic underachievers, since they unerringly turn out the same album nearly every time (or simply apply shadings yet more subtle with every subsequent release), but two qualities get in the way of that diagnosis. First, the four members have so many outside interests -- solo albums, production work, other bands, photography, comic books, etc. -- that they could never be called lazy. Second, the Sea and Cake have continued making records that possess an exquisite beauty, a quality their fans would never want to give up for the sake of experimentalism. All this is to say that the band has produced another gorgeous album, just like the ones that preceded it, despite the early press reports that Everybody would be a straight-ahead rock album with few overdubs. (That is quite true, but it doesn't change the sound a bit.) Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt indulge in the type of dual-guitar interplay that recalls Television more than anyone else, but the Sea and Cake's revolution was always a quiet one, and it's no different here. Waves of guitar -- fuzzy, washed, or jagged but always impeccably lean -- power the best songs: the opening "Up on Crutches," "Crossing Line," and, near the end, "Left On," where John McEntire's lively percussion serves to focus several minutes of clever guitar feedback and distortion. ~ John Bush