Lake Street Dive: Diving into the mix

Boston band Lake Street Dive.

Diving into The Auckland Arts Festival is bringing in two American indie bands who like to mix things up musically. Lydia Jenkin profiles Lake Street Dive.

Hailing from Boston, Lake Street Dive started out 11 years ago when four students at the New England Conservatory of Music decided to be a band.

"One afternoon, towards the end of our first year, Mike Olsen gathered the four of us together and said, 'We are now Lake Street Dive, we are a band'," says bassist Bridget Kearney.

"We didn't know quite what that meant right then, or what kind of band we were going to be, but we knew our name and we just kind of took it from there.

"And through several years of failed experiments at working out what kind of band we were not, we stumbled upon the combination of things which makes us what we are now."

Their set-up has Mike Calabrese on drums, Kearney on upright bass, Rachel Price singing lead vocals, and Olsen on guitar and trumpet, with the emphasis being on a space-filled sound, deliberately leaving things sparse with all four singing as well as playing.

"Rather than adding a keyboard player or another guitar player to fill out the sound, we simply added parts for the other three of us to sing. So we use our voices in instrumental ways - sometimes our voices will almost be functioning as an organ, laying out chords, and sometimes it will be harmonising with Rachel, sometimes be more of a counterpoint, or call and response.

"Having minimal instrumentation we learned to maximise what we can do with what we have, and often having those limitations forces you to come up with a more interesting result."

Despite all being formally trained, the group are renowned for their party-starting live style.

"If there was an original impetus for the band that was really it, to have a band that was for people just to hang out and enjoy and have a good time. I think it was kind of reactionary at the time to what we were experiencing in school, which was more of an intense focused listening environment ... with Lake Street Dive we were setting out to have something on the other end of the spectrum that was visceral and made you want to dance and move and smile and sing along."

They've gained international recognition through some of the covers they've filmed for YouTube.

They've done compelling renditions of songs such as I Want You Back by the Jackson Five, and saw it as a good way to draw new fans.

"Giving people a chance to hear a song that they are familiar with, played by our band, that kind of helped to introduce them to what we're all about. I think the other good thing about covers is that you always learn a lot from them.

"When you're writing something new you'll find yourself saying, 'Oh man, you know what would go great here is a sort of string swell of eighth notes leading into the chorus, just like they did in Walking On Broken Glass by Annie Lennox'.

"It just means you get to know these little musical building blocks, and the more you have, the more you can do with your own music."

Who: Lake Street Dive
Where and when: At the Auckland Arts Festival from March 12 to 14; and at Womad in Taranaki on March 15.
Listen to: Bad Self Portraits (2014), Fun Machine (2012)

- TimeOut