Lake Street Dive – Fun Machine: The Sequel
Here’s the last of my Lake Street Dive records – and I think the last of the catch-up records. As I have tried to go through my record collection alphabetically, I decided to stop every now and then and write about all the records I had acquired since the project started which fell earlier in the alphabet than wherever I was. This, my friends, is pure folly. They’re mostly very new to me, and I have little to say about them, little emotional connection – and in cases like this one, I’m probably just going to post pictures of the record and move on.
The problem then becomes my “new record” shelf. I have a shelf where I put all my new records, which is really where most of my playing rotation comes from. Now, “new” may be relative – there are some discs that have been there for two years at this point. They get my first attention when I’m looking for something to play because they’re new and fresh and I’m not tired of them, or they make me actively listen because I haven’t been hearing the songs since 1984 (the peak year for my collection, numbers-wise).
But the problem is that if I don’t go back and cover the records from the new record shelf, I can’t ever put them on the “old” record shelves – they’ll get mixed in with everything else and I’ll forget that I never posted them here. Which is vitally important, of course. So it looks like I’m stuck doing these catch-up posts, even though they take me ages because I have so little to say.
Anyway: Lake Street Dive. Fun Machine: The Sequel. In 2022, eight years after their first EP of snappy cover songs, they do it again, and this time there are no songs that I have to lift the needle on. (Sorry, and I know it’s blasphemy to say this when I live near Philly, but I do not like Hall and Oates songs.) It’s just a fun jaunt, and includes several Beatles songs they produced in rooftop concerts during the lockdown that are quite a bit of fun. Enjoyable, but not my first choice when looking for Lake Street Dive.
Now, back into the alphabet, kids. Gear up for the letter ‘N’, which is gonna be a quick run.
My “N” section would be a long slog . . . . . many, many, MANY albums by Napalm Death, New Order, NoMeansNo and NRBQ for starters. (Weird: just as I typed that, the Spotify shuffler queued up “Ridin’ in My Car” by NRBQ!)
Thoughts on the Dead was a big Lake Street Dive fan, especially of Bridget Kearney’s bass work, so I learned about them through him. Nice to revisit their catalog through your eyes/ears!
I’ve got an odd Danish ska band called Napoleon Solo, some Graham Nash, New Order (which I rarely listen to) . . . and then it peters out. It’s really an anomaly.
I don’t think there’s anyone else currently doing the jazzy pop that Lake Street does. In my memory, I thought that maybe Manhattan Transfer had been sorta similar, but someone played some for me a couple of weeks back and that was really closer to trad jazz singing than this is. One of the reasons I bought so much of the catalog is I don’t have much else that’s like it to bookend it with, so it tends to just turn into a Lake Street Dive listening session.