Aarin Wright is a veteran of the music scene, though most of her experience thus far has been offstage—or backstage. After years spent on staff at music venues in Seattle, booking sets for KEXP, and working with artists on the PR side, Wright launched Small Shake in 2024 with a series of singles leading up to last August’s Platonic EP, a collection of five breezy indie-folk tracks that blend country twang with soaring, full-band choruses more in line with the heartland-rock canon.
Now based in Los Angeles, Wright took to Solano Canyon in LA’s Elysian Park to perform the closing track from her EP, “Lucky,” and the loose single “Montana Dream Wife” for her “Neighborhoods” set. Backed with a full band including an additional guitar, bass, drums, trumpet, and backing vocals, Small Shake give the impression of a seasoned unit, not to mention native Angelenos. “I’m still relatively new to Los Angeles and remain so charmed by its sunlight and natural beauty: the citrus trees, the year-round flowers, the dramatic canyons,” Wright shares.
She goes on to add a bit of context for both tracks, sharing how their conception illuminates the vast distance between her old life in the PNW and her new life in Southern California. “Both ‘Lucky’ and ‘Montana Dream Wife’ were written in rainy Seattle at the painful conclusion of different friendships. Platonic relationships—the ways they shift and the lessons learned through them—inspire my writing more than most topics. There’s something cathartic about performing these songs surrounded by new community, in a new friend’s majestic backyard. It’s a light at the end of a storm.”
Check out the performance below, and stream Platonic here.
