Style
Lincoln maintains the range of musical styles present on the previous album, They Might Be Giants, and lyrically attempts to merge word play into narrative songs. Lyrical themes are broadened with the inclusion of songs detailing troubled romantic relationships ("Ana Ng", "They'll Need a Crane", "I've Got a Match"), and songs that verge on social or political satire ("Purple Toupee", "Kiss Me, Son of God"), whereas musically, the album explores a number of genres. For example, songs such as "Cowtown" and "Mr. Me" incorporate elements of sea shanties, while "Lie Still, Little Bottle" suggests a jazz influence.
Like previous releases, Lincoln does not utilize a full band arrangement. Instead, bass and drum tracks are entirely synthetic or sampled, with the exception of "Lie Still, Little Bottle"'s live drums. The drum tracks on the album were produced with an Alesis HR-16 drum machine. The album featured The Ordinaires, a nonet which was also signed to the Bar/None label, providing the string arrangement for "Kiss Me, Son of God".
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)