with Sway Wild featuring Dave McGraw & Mandy Fer
The title of Lake Street Dives Free Yourself Up is both an exhortation
to listeners and a statement of purpose for the band. The songs have
an infectious swagger, even when dealing with awkward breakups or the
unsettled state of our world. Free Yourself Up is Lake Street Dives
most confident album yet, seriously soulful and exuberantly rocking.
And, in many ways, it is Lake Street Dives most intimate and
collaborative, with the band itself taking over the production reins
and working as a tightly knit unit to craft these ten songs. In
addition, the quartet drafted touring keyboardist Akie Bermiss to join
them in the studio, literally freeing the band up to explore a wider
range of instrumental textures, construct more full-bodied
arrangements, and build stacks of lively background harmonies.On Free
Yourself Up, the sound is influenced by late sixties-early seventies
R&B, AM pop, and FM rock while the lyrics are informed more by
contemporary events. The album opens with Baby, Dont Leave Me Alone
With My Thoughts, which envisions a lover acting as a human shield
against the anxiety of our Twitter-ravaged age. Its funny, sweet, a
little angry, and definitely right up-to-the-minute in its sentiment.
Singer Rachael Price says, I thought about that song as the thesis of
this record. Its a disco-dance fun song but its also a person talking
about needing comfort from another person, and it has a reference to
the political climate.The lyrics to the guitar-driven Shame, Shame,
Shame, which feels like undiscovered, transistor-radio-ready AM gold,
bravely speak to an unnamed person: No Im not getting caught in your
little spider web/Wont let an angry dog get me down/Dont you think its
time we put this dog out of his misery?/Change is coming, oh yeah
Bassist Bridget Kearney explains, This album is based in the realities
in our time, which have inevitably become part of everyones daily
life. Its something you think about and obsess overand write songs
about. Free Yourself Up is about empowering yourself, emboldening
yourself, no matter whats going wrong.Adds drummer Mike Calabrese,
This time around, we were changing so many things anyway, we felt
freer to go deep into various subjects, to explore a multitude of
emotions to a background of music that is a different direction in and
of itself. Its a juxtaposition of new subject matter and new musical
developments. Were not just this happy go lucky band anymore.The band
clearly enjoyed itself in the studio as the rhythmically propulsive
Dude indicates. As the singer complains about a lover who is always
out with the guys, a steady beat builds to a big, defiant chorus and
then the song veers to the left, culminating in a kind of psychedelic
duel between trumpet and guitar, its conclusion marked by echoes of
the bands laughter. The percolating Red Light Kisses is highlighted by
call-and-response vocals between Price and her band mates (doing their
best falsettos) and a classic percussion-and-handclaps breakdown
towards the end. Musta Been Something is a more stripped-down
slow-dance ballad, a showcase for Prices voice and Mike McDuck Olsons
guitar. I Can Change is an even more pensive ballad. We were watching
the news in the summer of 2017 and seeing people trapped in these
cycles of hate that humanity cant seem to find its way out of, Kearney
explains. And its easy enough to look at that from the outside and
criticize, but the really hard part is striving to understand your own
weaknesses and biases and prejudices and learning to do better. I Can
Change is us summoning the courage to do that.Lake Street Dive was for
many years a self-reliant unit. After forming in 2004, while all the
members were studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in
Boston, they assiduously built a following through a series of
independent album releases, countless club tours, and a few lucky
breaks. In 2013, producer T Bone Burnett invited them to join a
star-studded lineup at a New York City concert where they practically
stole the showand wound up with a deal from Nonesuch Records. The
bands label debut, Side Pony, was greeted with raves. Rolling Stone
called it irresistible and the Boston Globe said, Side Pony is a
confident, expertly played statement from a band thats been honing its
approach for more than a decade, and it clearly shows that Lake Street
Dive is ready to make itself known to whatever audiences have yet to
succumb to its many charms.Lake Street Dive spent eighteen months on
the road in support of Side Pony. Despite the hectic pace, the band
mates started brainstorming about their next album whenever they found
a spare moment. As guitarist McDuck recalls, We remembered how things
worked before we added the crew and the bus and the manager. All of
that support is great, but it left us with less time to sit around and
listen to music together. So when we had a day off, we made a point to
sit on the tour bus and play records for each other, the way we used
to when wed drive ourselves in a van.Free Yourself Up is the sound of
a democratic party, organized by a band that has bolstered its deep
well of talent with a healthy supply of mutual trust. Though the
individual band members had traditionally written separately and then
delivered meticulously rendered demos to the group, the process began
to change while recording Side Pony. This time Lake Street Dive took
that idea further, helping each other out on nascent songs and
ultimately deciding to produce the album itself, with the ample help
of engineer Dan Knobler, a former Brooklynite now based in
Nashville.That wasnt the original plan. As the Lake Street Dive team
was deliberating about which producers to reach out to, they decided
to book a demo session on their own at Knoblers tiny Goosehead Palace
studio, a modest but very welcoming garage space. Recounts Price, We
go in the studio every two years for a concentrated period of time and
then we go on the road and perfect what we do. But we dont have that
same practice in the studio. So we said to ourselves, Lets practice
what recording feels like. We found out that a) we could have so much
fun and b) we work very quickly in a specific way and we collaborated
perfectly together. She continues, I think we were quite scared that
without having that fifth neutral voice we would endlessly be in the
decision-making processbecause we are so democratic. Our fears were
assuaged after that session, though.They sent the results to
Brooklyn-based mixer Joe Visciano and, says Kearney, he was able to do
incredible things, making the record really pop and sound like it was
recorded in a multi-million-dollar studio. That seemed like the
perfect solution, to do it in a place that was really comfortable. So
they returned to Knobler in Nashville to complete the album, forgoing
previous notions about moving to a different studio for the next step.
Kearney continues, The process felt really natural. We had a good
amount of tunes to work with, some of which we had played live, some
wed never played at all, and we kept writing during the recording
process. We found tools that were fun and worked well in the studio.
For instance, a friend had left a Korg synthesizer in my apartment; we
tried it on one song and loved it, so we put it on a couple of other
tracks, she says. And Akie was a huge part of the sound of the record
as well; the way he plays and chooses to voice things elevates the
song.There was a fearlessness to the process, an open-mindedness.
Collaborating allowed us to feel freer; we were sharing the
songwriting burden. Some of these songs almost died in our voice memo
apps but were revivedor Frankenstein-edin the process of
collaborating, adds Calabrese. Dan Knobler became more than just an
engineer; he was an arbiter. He was very important to the sound of the
record and to certain artistic choices that helped to polish things to
perfection.Kearney summarizes the experience of the bands
collaborative, flexible approach to making Free Yourself Up,
explaining the origins of lead album track Good Kisser: I had thought
of the chorus or at least the opening, it was a lyrical idea I had
plus a little tiny bit of a melody. Then we were on stage in North
Carolina playing this cool funky groove we had started using on How It
Feels To Be Alone and I thought, Thats it! Thats the perfect thing for
this song idea I have. It really needs to find a home. I got off
stage, went to the dressing room, and wrote almost the whole songin
the moment, inspired by the strength of the band that I experienced on
stage that night.Bringing the process full circle, Price adds, When we
heard Joes first mix of that song, I stood up and said, I cant believe
we made this in a garage!
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26/09/2018 Last update