The High Notes
Lake Street Dive, “Obviously” (Nonesuch Records)
Lake Street Dive’s seventh studio album takes its name from the first word in the first song — “Obviously.” Here’s another thing that’s obvious: You need to make this band part of your life.
Call them what you like — alt-country, indie-pop, pop-folk — the hard-to-classify Lake Street Dive offer top-notch songwriting with progressive lyrics and one of the most underrated vocalist in music today.
Originally formed in 2004 by students attending the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the band consists of singer Rachael Price, Mike “McDuck” Olson on trumpet and guitar, Bridget Kearney on upright bass and Mike Calabrese on drums. Newest member, keyboardist Akie Bermiss, harmonizes beautifully with Price on “Same Old News,” and wrote the beautiful and wistful “Anymore.”
The 11-track “Obviously” follows “Free Yourself Up” from 2018, which featured one of the band’s hits, “Good Kisser.” This time, “Feels Like the Last Time” has a rootsy vibe and “Sarah” is a cappella.
“Nobody’s Stopping You Now” was penned by Price as a letter of encouragement to her teenage self and “Know That I Know” is a funky and funny trumpet-led ode to lovers (“You’re Captain Kirk to my Spock/I’m Dee Dee Ramone and you’re punk rock.”)
The band’s progressive bent is evident on the feminist “Being a Woman” — “If I complain they’ll blame my feelings/But look at the view from my glass ceiling” — “Hush Money,” which assails crooked politics, and “Making Do,” which tackles climate change with the lines, “What do I say to my baby girl?/ Leaving her with a half a world?”
“Obviously” was produced by Mike Elizondo, who has worked with Dr. Dre, Eminem, Carrie Underwood and Fiona Apple. Lake Street Dive have never sounded better, full and clear with every instrument given a chance to shine in every song.
Superb musicians already, they can switch on a dime and go in another direction. Kearney even teases as much with the terrific first song “Hypotheticals,” singing: “Obviously, we’re at the beginning of something/I don’t expect you to know where it’s gonna go.” Well, we’ll ruin the surprise — it’s gonna go great.
— Mark Kennedy, AP
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“Spaceman,” Nick Jonas (Island Records)
Make room, Paul McCartney, Snow Patrol and Taylor Swift. Add Nick Jonas to the growing list of artists who have made fabulous albums during the pandemic.
Jonas’ 11-track electronic-rich “Spaceman” is an airy and slightly unmoored love letter from a lusty man who is drinking alone, a little crazed and maybe paranoid. “Too drunk and I’m all in my feelings,” he sings in the excellent “2Drunk.” “Should I send that text? Maybe not/But I miss the sex.” In other words, we are all Nick Jonas. The pandemic seems to have scrambled the newlywed, who should have been enjoying his honeymoon period with actor Priyanka Chopra. The unrushed Troye Sivan-like “Don’t Give Up On Us,” the opening track, is alarming coming so soon in a love affair.
Not to worry: “Delicious” is so steamy it should come with a explicit warning. (“I’m licking the dishes,” he purrs). “This Is Heaven” is a more PG love song, sounding like something Lionel Richie would record, complete with an old school horn solo.
Things get naughty again on the aptly named “Sexual” — “Tongue tied/Follow your neck down to your thighs.” His lover “puts the sex in sexual.” In a nice nod to his Indian-born love, he’s included an electric sitar. His falsetto soars and the bed is “soaked.”
“Deeper Love” — which samples from “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner — might actually remind listeners of an updated version of Steve Winwood “Higher Love.” More traditional Jonas-sounding songs are also on the album, like “If I Fall” and “Nervous.”
Jonas co-wrote every track with producer and multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin and the songwriter and singer Mozella. He was separated from Chopra last summer when she filmed in Germany and explored that loss and discomfort.
Jonas has never been more relatable. He, too, likely was watching “The Last Dance” along with all of us, slipping in a reference on the album to “MJ in the playoffs.” His TV is always on. “All my friends are home/So am I,” he sings.
It all comes together on the title track, which is chilly and brilliant as it captures us all in lockdown, like terrestrial astronauts. “Mask off minute I get home/All safe now that I’m alone.” Few songs in the past year have better captured the unease and alienation of this past year. — Mark Kennedy, AP
“Whispers and Sighs,” David Olney and Anana Kaye (Schoolkids Records)
There’s a poignancy to these 11 swan songs, especially with such titles as “My Favorite Goodbye,” “My Last Dream Of You” and “The Great Manzini (Disappearing Act).”
Finality is a recurring theme on “Whispers and Sighs,” and during the mixing of the album early last year, singer-songwriter David Olney died on stage at a Florida music festival at age 71.
A master of his craft, Olney always chased his muse rather than hits, and his reputation is burnished by this unlikely collaboration with Anana Kaye, a young singer-songwriter from the country of Georgia who is now based in Nashville.
These original songs about love, longing and impermanence are set more than a century ago, perhaps in Europe, their dreamy beauty magnified by marvelous singing. Kaye’s arresting alto echoes Broadway and the Caucasus Mountains, while Olney makes like an Americana Burl Ives. They both sound wise and well-traveled.
“Time takes everything but love,” Olney sings on “My Favorite Goodbye.”
Kaye’s husband, guitarist Irakli Gabriel, co-wrote and contributed to arrangements that vary from the fiddle-driven Klezmer of the title cut to piano-pounding rock on “Last Days Of Rome.”
As the latter reaches its compelling climax, Olney shouts, “Raise your glass!”
Here’s to you, David. — Steven Wine, AP