By DONNA BALANCIA
Lake Street Dive brought out the best at The Wiltern, performing songs off the new album, Free Yourself Up and finishing with some classic Queen.
The stylish jazzy blues band creates a vintage sound reminiscent of the 1940s, but spins the sound into the modern day. Lake Street Dive is known for great original love songs and an uncanny ability to take another person’s song and make it their own. The band’s cover of The Jackson 5 tune “I Want You Back” has more than 5 million YouTube views.
The band members are sharper than ever, with Rachael Price on lead vocals, ukulele, guitar, Mike Olson on trumpet, guitar, organ, electric piano synthesizer, vocals, Bridget Kearney on standup bass, electric bass, piano, vocals, Mike Calabrese on drums, organ, vocals and new addition to the band, Akie Bermiss on keyboards and vocals.
Lake Street Dive has a bee-bop, bluesy sound that evokes heartfelt emotion. Price’s vocals set the standard for any singer today.
The band released Free Yourself Up last May and found success with the lead single “Good Kisser,” a heartbreaker about splitting up.
In 2016, the band released the album Side Pony, and prior to that the group released an album every year or every other year since 2010. “You Go Down Smooth” is one of the band’s most well-known songs, off the 2014 album Bad Self Portraits.
One of the highlights in a night of great music was the finale: The band gave Queen an honorary cover with a Lake Street Dive trademark version of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Opener Robert Finley brought back the blues in a big way, schooling the mixed-age crowd in the art of playing the blues. The 64-year-old musician’s motto is Age Don’t Mean a Thing, the name of his first album.
