OZY Playlist: Parov Stelar and Lake Street Dive
Every other week, our Performance editor shares what’s happening in her earbuds.
Maybe it’s just me. But swing seems to have fallen by the wayside as the decades have passed, despite that ’90s European revival. In this week’s playlist, two very different artists sing the swing influence, in ways both subtle and direct.
Louis Prima, Coleman Hawkins and the Count. Duke Ellington and Ivie Anderson. Lil Hardin Armstrong. They’re some of the greatest swing-era greats — and some of the artists whom Parov Stelar samples on 2015’s The Demon Diaries so heavily it’s less sampling and more reinterpretation. The Austrian DJ and producer makes electro swing, which fast-forwards tracks from the 1930s into the now with the sounds of house and breakbeat.
Rachael Price, frontwoman of Brooklyn’s Lake Street Dive, has the kind of voice that knocks you out with its can-do-anything beauty. I love hearing her — and Bridget Kearney’s kickass upright bass — paired with Count Basie and Coleman Hawkins. Side Pony, the follow-up to 2014’s lovely Bad Self Portraits, will be out in February.
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