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[ROCK] In the process of making Side Pony, Lake Street Dive’s third studio full-length and debut for Nonesuch, the conservatory-trained Brooklyn-by-way-of-Boston quartet learned to use the recording studio as its own instrument. It’s an important milestone in the evolution of a band that cherishes classics like The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Beatles’ White Album, both from an era when studio creations in pop music were growing increasingly experimental.

“In the past, we were capturing something more akin to our live show,” explained Mike “McDuck” Olsen (guitar, trumpet), calling from a tour stop in Wyoming. “On this record, however, there was a very deliberate progression—an embracing of the studio as a tool. The irony is that we ended up playing the core tracks 90% live anyway.”

Side Pony, which brings the band to Town Ballroom on Friday, August 26, synthesizes a wide range of influences across the board of contemporary music, which Olsen says is a byproduct of their collective musical geekdom and near-manic drive to dissect the tunes that make them tick the most. But the album still sounds enough like the organic soul-pop of its predecessor, 2014’s Bad Self Portraits (Signature Sounds), that listeners won’t likely realize the carefully layered production straight away. As usual, Rachael Price’s honey-coated pipes steal the show; Initially, it’s hard to hear anything else. But over time a sonic complexity reveals,  filling in some of the open space that characterizes much of Portraits. Luckily, they hired the right man for the producer’s chair, and while Side Pony sounds busier, it’s far from cluttered.

“We knew we wanted to work with Dave Cobb,” Olsen said. “Despite being known for Americana projects, our favorites of his have a lot of depth that transcends genre. Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music put us over the moon. He’s got a great country voice and writes great country songs, but a few cuts on there have tape reversal tricks and bits of distortion—elements that betray the Americana tradition but also make for a much richer listening experience.”

Lake Street Dive cut the tracks for Side Pony in two distinct chunks with a month long tour of Australia in between. Giving the initial recordings time to breathe, they later decided to scrap a portion of what they had and write new material collaboratively—another first.

“The tour afforded some distance and we came back and asked ourselves: is this the album? We decided it wasn’t. We experimented, wrote as a band, used samples, and pulled brand new songs from ideas dreamt up in Australia… where we’d tried very hard not to think about the next recording session. It’s so easy to over-think this process. The more spontaneous and less attached, the better. If you get precious about it, you lose your objectivity and six months later you think ‘What have I done?!’”