🎧Have You Heard? Lake Street Dive's SIDE PONY [2016]🎧

Hopefully, this ain't a new one for most of you. Came across Lake Street Dive's Side Pony while skimming and skipping through Spotify's New Release tab one weekend about nineteen months ago. It was unheralded and unhyped in my little corner of the world but I've had my blinders on and my shields up for some time but the pretty color scheme of the cover art caught my eye though if I had been paying attention I would have seen the same cover art on the album's first single "I Don't Care About You", release a few weeks ahead of the album. Didn't I just write that I had blinders on?

So I listened to the album from the top to the bottom. Once, twice, three times. The missus went to yoga later that evening and in her absence, I twisted the volume knob up from its usual nine o'clock position to just past twelve o'clock, maybe closer to one, and let it rip one more time. (You're welcome, neighborhood!) Then I spent the next month or so raving about Side Pony and Lake Street Dive to everyone I know or just came in contact with in my day to day affairs. Then, in short order, my father-in-law entered home hospice, Prince died and then, the very next day, my father-in-law decided hospice had served him well and he passed on. Gradually, after three weeks of avoiding music altogether after those two devastating losses, I found my way back to Prince's music and enjoyed a solid couple weeks of nothing but Prince and when I came out from under that purple pain, Side Pony was the first album I jumped on. The video below feature Lake Street Dive covering Prince's "When You Were Mine".

My favorite tracks on Side Pony are the gospel-ish Joe Cocker rocker "Close To Me", the sunny bounce of "Call Off Your Dogs", the sassy, soulful "Spectacular Failure", the bluesy first single "I Don't Care About You", the playful double-entendre of the title track, the energetic "Hell Yeah", the jazzy second single "Mistakes" and the funky get down of "Can't Stop". That's 75% of the entire 12 track, 40-minute album right there, people. Not a clunker in the bunch. The band is tight, Dave Cobb's production is right and Rachael Price's voice rides and glides over the top of it all, masterfully straddling all genres. Lake Street Dive's Side Pony was my most listened to album of 2016 and has quite a few plays into 2017 as well.