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.
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Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or style:
“If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there are night owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)