Small Shake – Veruca
Small Shake, the LA-based project of Seattle-raised artist Aarin Wright, today shares new single “Veruca”, the final offering from her debut EP Platonics (out Friday, August 22).
A softly pulsing, underwater soundscape of synths and programmed drums with subtle moments of sonic brightness—the click of a typewriter, the swell of strings—”Veruca” shares an intimate moment of doomed optimism. The moment you realize a friendship is over, but are not quite ready to let go.
“Funny enough, I wrote ‘Veruca’ when I was desperate to share a particularly juicy piece of music industry gossip,” shares Wright. “I knew my former confidant, my former friend, would revel in the story. I felt her absence stronger than ever, but had to laugh at the circumstances that had me so worked up. I conjured a future where we would be connected again, and could fill in the gaps of all we’d missed.”
Accompanying the track is an ethereal, deep sea music video, captured by director Mia Gualtieri off the coast of the Channel Islands.
Gualtieri shares: “One of my great fears was looking into the abyss of deep water, but a recent dive trip with friends allowed me to face it head on. After a couple dives and seeing the bright orange Garibaldi fish, my lifelong phobia started to dissipate. I wanted to visually sum up my experience of facing the ‘dark menacing water,’ and ‘Veruca’ felt like a very serendipitous way to do so.”
“Veruca” follows earlier singles “Lucky” and “Still Too Soon”, all examples of the tender platonic love letters that fill the pages of Platonics.
Aarin Wright has explored every nook and cranny of the independent music world. The Washington state native has worked for multiple venues, served as a session booker for Seattle’s lauded KEXP, helped run record labels and independent music festivals, hosted radio shows, and written features as a music journalist.
She’s done almost every job the music industry has to offer… except leading a band. Until now. Until Small Shake. When the Covid-19 pandemic slowed her work life to a crawl, Wright—who grew up studying classical music and jazz on piano—finally picked up a guitar and taught herself to play. She named the burgeoning project for something joyful: her go-to order at the old-school diners and ice cream parlours she seeks out wherever she lands.
Picking up early support from places like The FADER, For The Rabbits, Atwood Magazine, KEXP, The SoCal Sound and more, Small Shake’s debut EP, Platonics, was written about every possible shade of friendship, from the pure joy of unspoken connection to the complicated nuances of unrequited queer love. If the songs are platonic love letters, it’s only fitting that opener “Veruca” would feature faint, rhythmic typewriter sounds as percussion. It makes sense that the lush and airy “She Was Right” would explore the awkward places where regret and codependence overlap. It feels natural that the barroom piano and ethereal vocals of album centerpiece “Historical Event” weigh grand tragedy and personal disappointment on the same scale.
Largely written during the native Seattleite’s seven years in that city’s music scene, the EP’s rich blend of expansive and lo-fi sound was intimately shaped by the collaboration with LA-based producer Andrew Pelletier (Fur Trader), and mastered by Patrick Damphier (The Mynabirds, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Judy Blank).
Nothing about the EP betrays the fact that this is Wright’s first collection of songs. It has all the heart and the pent-up stories of a debut effort, but it’s clear that in all Wright’s years of being intimately involved with music, she was taking notes.
“I’ve been in awe of musicians my entire life,” she says. “Being able to play various roles behind the scenes, that awe and wonder has remained.”
It’s been a long time coming, but Small Shake is finally here. The awe and the wonder remain.
Small Shake will perform an EP release show in Los Angeles on September 8 at Zebulon. Platonics is out August 22.
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