When it comes to Cake [ tickets ], dry humor is always in style. As the band played its 80-minute set on Thursday night (11/18), their ever-present disco ball hung overhead. Behind the band, perhaps as a tribute to our newly re-elected President, was a huge, official-looking banner with the words, "A safer world, a more hopeful America."

Sacramento's Cake, circa November 2004, is as smarmy as ever. The band's recently released album, while not shattering the charts, is another set of singular songs, at once organic and progressive. From their sound to their lyrics, no one embraces irony and sarcasm like this band.

Opening the Los Angeles-area show with their classic rocker "Frank Sinatra," the band looked out at a half empty Universal Amphitheatre. They didn't seem to mind, however. When they were knee deep into their second tune, "Sheep Go to Heaven," lead singer John McCrea was up to his old tricks, asking the audience to sing along, "Let me hear those beautiful, powerful voices of the Southland!"

And the band didn't waste much time before unveiling some of their newer material, off "Pressure Chief"--which, if you're a fan of Cake [ tickets ]'s earlier music, should satisfy you equally. The night's third song, "Pressure Chief" opener "Wheels," brought with it a new banner, this one simply a reproduction of the album's cover art. Next up, "Comfort Eagle," with guitarist Xan McCurdy supplying aggressive minor riffs that electrocuted the otherwise simple, catchy song and caused a fervor in the crowd.

Despite the half empty (half full?) theater, McCrea was in good, sardonic spirits, as always. After finishing up on "Comanche"--which yields the wonderful line, "If you want to have cities, you've got to build roads"--McCrea offered squishy Cake stress balls to audience members who could answer the question, "What percentage of the world's population has access to running water?" Answer: 35%. "And Heather gets a Cake stress ball!"

No doubt, this is a fun band with a pocketful of tunes that are as catchy and smart as any by whatever modern band du jour is buzzing on the airwaves. Cake, however, supplies the music without the condescending sheen of hipness. On this night, older material like "Rock and Roll Lifestyle," "Stickshifts and Safetybelts," and "Daria," sounded vital, eliciting mounds of applause from the cheery audience. The set closed with the band's biggest hit, "Never There."

Cake ended the evening with a two-song encore that featured their newest single, "No Phone," which included a lengthy men-versus-women sing-along battle, and a cover of Gloria Gaynor's disco hit, "I Will Survive." Introduced by McCrea as a song about hope, the singer added, "Not that there's much to be hopeful about. Humans aren't gonna survive."