While a group led by a piano player isn't always going to be less aggressive by default than one led by guitar, it does allow the band far more options when it comes to the approach they take with their music. There's something about a piano's sound, even if only an upright, but especially a grand or baby grand, that brings an elegance to music that can't be matched by any electric guitar. Perhaps it's that lack of roughness that makes it the rare lead instrument in popular music that it is, as it might make it more difficult to create a song along the lines of what people expect from popular music.
The danger with popular music, when you surrender the rough edge that the electric guitar gives, is you run the risk of producing music that sounds too precious - music that ends up being played in the afternoons on adult easy listening stations or in doctor's waiting rooms because it is innocuous to the point of banality. That's not the case with the music on The Gabe Dixon Band as even those songs which include strings, the sometime kiss of death for a decent pop song, retain a strength of character that preclude them from ever becoming aural wallpaper.
One of the major strengths of the band is the songwriting skills of Gabe Dixon. His lyrics are intelligent and introspective without ever being navel gazing. He also proves that you can write songs that are emotionally honest without them slipping into the territory of cheap sentimentality or stooping to manipulating your listener with catch phrases. "When you don't know where you're going/And you don't know why/It feels like another day is bleeding/Into the night" he sings on "Further The Sky" summing up the sensations of the directionless, watching helplessly as another day disappears and they haven't accomplished anything.
I'm awfully big on universality, things that speak to as many people as possible, or that are able to take personal experiences and couch them in such a way that they are recognizable to as many people as possible. It's that ability that allows a good song writer, like Gabe Dixon, to write about emotional subject matters without coming off as self-pitying or a whiner. It's the difference between listening to someone sing about how their heart was broken by a mean girl/boy and someone singing about love and broken hearts in general. I don't know about you but I'd rather read a sonnet about love by William Shakespeare then the scribblings of someone barely pubescent writing about how their first love broke their heart. Now, while Gabe might not be in Will's league yet, compared to the majority of what passes for love songs out there his are head and shoulders beyond what anyone else is writing when it comes to depth and maturity.
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