Musical Style
Like Not Drowning, Waving, My Friend The Chocolate Cake's music can be seen to straddle the worlds of ambient and world music, with an emphasis on piano and violin-led acoustic music. Influences range from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Celtic folk music, to the less obvious, such as John Cale and Talk Talk. The band's collective musical influences are diverse and include: Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Irish and Scottish folk music, Joy Division, Arvo Pärt, and folk / pop / rock performers such as Billy Bragg, Talk Talk, John Cale and Michelle Shocked.
Each album displays a range of styles from subtle chamber music instrumentals to atmospheric folk/pop ballad fusions through to full scale romps. The group has a string section as a permanent fixture to their line-up, headed by Helen Mountfort, which greatly effects their song writing. Bridie, the groups main lyricist, often writes songs inspired by Melbourne suburban life. Other themes that are frequent include community politics and young love. Bridie sings with a distinctly Australian accent, differing from most vocalists who tend to emulate an American accent.
Read more about this topic: My Friend The Chocolate Cake
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or style:
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)