Small Shake – Platonics
Small Shake, the LA-based project of Seattle-raised artist Aarin Wright, releases her debut EP Platonics.
Platonics includes the previously released singles “Lucky”, “Still Too Soon” and “Veruca.”
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.
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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