“Fun Machine: The Sequel” takes Lake Street Dive back to its roots as the band drapes their own recognizable dry jazz overtop of the musical and lyrical frameworks of their inspirations. 

The six-track EP features covers of the Secret Sisters’ “Automatic,” Dionne Warwick’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” Shania Twain’s “You’re Still The One,” Carole King’s “So Far Away,” Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time” and The Cranberries’ “Linger.” Though not connected by any particular genre, the songs are nevertheless carefully chosen to create a cohesive strand throughout the set. Taken as a whole, the EP tells a fraught love story persisting over distances and through time, drawn together by a percussive and key-heavy musical background.

In July, the band released a trailer for the EP along with the statement: “Imagine you walk into your favorite local dive bar and Lake Street Dive is on stage, doing our regular weekly gig for $5 a head. These are the songs we’d be covering there and how we’d be playing them. Some deep cuts, some sentimental favorites and some (hopefully) epic crowd pleasers.” 

Though none of the tracks on their own quite qualify as “epic,” there are certainly some sentimental crowd pleasers that give insight into lead vocalist Rachael Price’s own vocal and stylistic inspiration. Price does Raitt proud in particular with her deep husk in “Nick of Time.” 

As with arguably all covers, there is something lost when a band works its own style into someone else’s song. In the band’s interpretation of Warwick’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” the piece loses its status as a sweeping heartbreak ballad while gaining the spunk and bounce from Price’s vocals. Similarly, keyboardist Akie Bermiss’s lead vocals on Twain’s “You’re Still The One” erase any trace of “country” from the song-description, turning the piece instead into a coffee house jazz jam. This give and take allows for each piece to be respectfully reinvented into something new. 

As always, Lake Street Dive displays an impeccable ability to manipulate empty spaces throughout the EP. Rather than ramping each song up into something more grandiose than the original, the band strips the songs down to their rhythmic, melodic and lyrical bases, highlighting the original artists’ foundational mastery while supplementing with the subtle soulful instrumentation focused on a drum kit and a keyboard. In each song, the band pays respectful and humble homage to the original artist.

The loss of guitarist and trumpeter Mike “McDuck” Olson, who retired from the band in 2021, left a noticeable gap in some of the songs where a post-bridge trumpet solo would previously have watermarked the piece’s as truly “Lake Street Dive.” Even so, skillful stand-ins on strings by bassist Bridget Kearney carry the songs through while subtly redefining the band’s sound. 

Lake Street Dive released the original “Fun Machine” EP in 2012 following their debut self-titled album. “Fun Machine” covers such as Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl” and the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back” popularized the band’s sound and set a precedent of brassy funk and smooth vocals that they have maintained for the past decade. 

The EP’s trailer projects the band’s close-knit and goofy demeanor by sending team members on a mission to “bring back the fun.” Coming off the band’s 2021 album “Obviously,” a heavy though hopeful inspection of some of the more exhausting global trials of the past several years, “Fun Machine: The Sequel” is an uplifting display of the fun and joy that come with consuming and making music. Far from the covers stagnating the band’s creativity, the EP allows for an innovative acknowledgement of musical inspirations while creating the atmosphere of a laid-back living room jam session.