There is a "serious" cabaret music style that goes from Kurt Weill to Carla Bley and others. Aaron Novik's Floating World, Vol. 1 (Porto Franco PFR 021) fits in there somewhere. It's a suite of songs for female vocalist--mostly Carla Kihlstedt or Katy Stephan--along with a cabaret-rock-old-time styled chamber group.
The lyrics have to do with everyday life and/or whimsical-philosophical takes on modernity.
It sometimes veers a little to the side of "cute" and that you need to get past if you are to appreciate the very musical side of it all. It's not in an operatic vocal style but (like Weill and Bley) a vernacular one. And the music toys with theatre and vernacular while it transcends that with an original take on where to place it all.
This may not get enough attention, I fear, but it is quite different and needs to be heard.
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