At a time when division is high and negativity seems to be infesting every corner of people’s day-to-day, Lake Street Dive have instead chosen to go down a path of positivity.
That’s the mindset on “Good Together,” the quintet’s recently released eighth full-length outing. As founding member Rachael Price explained in a recent interview, the seed was planted when the band decided to engage in a songwriter’s retreat at drummer/backup vocalist Mike Calabrese’s Vermont home in early 2023.
“We came up with this general concept that we started calling ‘joyful rebellion,’ ” she recalled. “It came out of … not feeling like we were in the mood to be writing sad songs, negative songs or angry songs and wanting to lean into more joyful subjects, but also not wanting to write a fluffy record, either. We didn’t want to shy away from the things we were feeling. We just wanted to put a lot of positivity into the songs. That’s where things like ‘Help Is On the Way’ was inspired by that concept. ‘Twenty-Five’ was directly inspired by that concept. ‘Good Together’ is obviously about two people that have had bad luck in past relationships and maybe haven’t been great people themselves, but then they find themselves having better habits when they’re together. We sort of kept taking that idea and putting that twist into the songs.”
Aiding and abetting in this concept was producer Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre/Fiona Apple), who also produced Lake Street Dive’s 2021 effort “Obviously.” For Price, if the band was going to change things up by working together for the first time ever in the earliest and most vulnerable stages of songwriting, then Elizondo was the person who would help it all come off successfully.
“We’ve done co-writing in the past, but have never sat down in the same room as each other and looked at each other and basically stared into the empty canvas of what a song could be and come up with ideas with each other on the spot,” Price said. “Going into this process again, we had a lot more trust that he (Elizondo) would be able to hear all the demos of the songs we’d been working on and know which ones were going to make the record. He’s just a really confident voice and he doesn’t ever really put out bad music. When you have somebody like that saying a song is good and he knows he’s going to be able to make it sound good or that he knows how to get a great performance out of all of us, it just puts us at ease.”
What also made this recording experience all the more special for Price was that she got to share it with her newborn daughter.
“It was the first thing I did after I had my baby,” she shared. “She was there with me and I had been at home with her for many, many months prior to that. For me, the most fun part was integrating her into that part of my life for the very first time, and it was really exciting.”
Those positive vibes, combined with the Elizondo/Lake Street Dive chemistry, is on full display on “Good Together’s” 11 cuts, which also showcase the band’s musical range. “Seats At the Bar” coasts along on a bouncy tropicalia vibe and “Dance With a Stranger” gets juiced by a new jack vibe and airy ‘80s-kissed synths. Meanwhile, “Get Around” has a slinky, nasty funk vibe that has this jam coming off like a Sly & the Family Stone outtake. Elsewhere, Lake Street Dive digs deep into the good feelies with cuts like “Twenty-Five,” a piano ballad that serves as a love letter to a past relationship that didn’t work out.
The prospect of bringing these songs to a live music setting has Price and her bandmates eager to hit the road. They stop Sunday at Allentown’s new Archer Music Hall.
“The set is just a lot more fun and it expresses the band’s personality in a visual way unlike anything we’ve been able to do before,” Price said. “We’re just excited to play around with the show and the way it’s all going to come together. We also have a percussionist coming out with us for a lot of the shows. And we have a full horn section — three horn players — the Huntertones — who are on the record and are going to be playing a lot of the shows with us.”
Dave Gil de Rubio is a freelance writer.
