Pentecostal Girl (2007) – My Friend the Chocolate Cake

Pentecostal Girl is already the fifth song to appear here from The Cake this year. Regular followers will know what a huge fan I am of the Australian pop chamber group and of the solo work by its founder, vocalist, pianist and songwriter – David Bridie. This Melbourne band could also be described as a baroque and gypsy-like romp and ballad group and goes without saying they almost always hit the sweet spot in my musical taste-buds.

Today’s featured track is from the band’s sixth studio album – Home Improvements (image inset). I presented its title track back in 2022 which includes their humorous video aptly filmed at a Melbourne Flea market. You see, that song is all about consumer distractions – the trappings stopping many of us from taking time out to indulge in life’s simple pleasures. The band have done “salvation through song” before. In their 1994 hit I Got a Plan, Bridie sang, “Let’s take off in the blue station wagon and find the open road to salvation, away from here.” I couldn’t recommend those aforementioned two songs anymore highly if you have a penchant for their music.

Pentecostal Girl follows the tongue in cheek tone of the title track but radically shifts in subject matter. Here Bridie recalls his boyhood crush on his friend’s 15 year-old sister who happens to be a Pentecostal. It is as though you are reading the frenetic and meandering thoughts of a 12 year-old and Bridie sings it with such a heavy Australian accent, something his contemporary’s have tended to shy away from. Pentecostal Girl is the Cakes’ equivalent of a teenager’s story ala J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye with respect to its candid portrayal of teenager’s thoughts. You can hear in Bridie’s voice he is enjoying his carefree life of a musician here.

“Being able to lose yourself in music is a wonderful thing. When the world’s giving you the shits, there’s nothing better than sitting in a room and losing yourself in the rhythm, melody and texture of music.“

Bridie states in his lyrics – ‘I stay over at the Ringwood house‘ which is the same eastern Melbourne suburb I stayed with my best friend’s family and coincidentally was dating his cousin – A Yorkshire lass called Louise who was a temporary resident in their household visiting from England. Pentecostal Girl (and despite Louise being Catholic) and another by Bridie, but as a solo artist – Come Around brings back such profound memories. Writing blogs can be cathartic, cant they? The nostalgia is strong with this one although it’s far from icing on the cake from the Cake, it still brings a wry smile to my face. And the lyrics certainly drive the song.

Since there was so much time between the Cake’s previous album Curious (2002) and Home Improvements (2007), in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald Bridie said “We never broke up…We’d sort of taken our foot off the pedal a bit.”

[Verse 1]
My friend’s Pentecostal sister
She’s three years older than me
At fifteen she’s got a lot of things that strangely kind of interest me
I sleep over at the Ringwood house
And help with his paper round
It’s twice as big on Saturdays when its cars and lost and found

[Chorus]
What chance have I got?
A snowflake’s chance in Hell
But, believe it or not
I’m in love with a Pentecostal girl

[Verse 2]
Smitten by her heart-shaped face, her clogs and her big brown eyes
The bumps beneath her jumper, to me they kinda tantalise
Her clothes smell of sweet perfume
A Sherbet poster on the wall
I daydream that one day she’ll marry me and not God water [?]

[Bridge 1]
The family bothering God on Sundays in the mud-tin basketball shed
It’s got keyboards, drums, and trumpets and preachers
Veins pop out from his head
And this woman seated in front, she throws her hands up in the air
She’s on direct phone line to Jesus and she screams like she just doesn’t care

[Verse 3]
Peter can’t believe that I’ve got the hots for his dumb older sister
And her pencil case it is covered with the name of a boy who lives in Callister
She don’t know that I exist
She thinks I’m just a little pest
What chance have I got? – I got no hair on my balls or my chest

References:
1. Sydney Morning Herald – My Friend the Chocolate Cake
2. My Friend The Chocolate Cake – Wikipedia