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ABOUT
SMALL SHAKE
Platonics
(S/r)Add date: 8.26.2025
Release date: 8.22.2025
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Aarin Wright has explored every nook and cranny of the independent music world. The Washington state native has worked for two 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 on stage.
Until now. Until Small Shake.
“I always had an itch to play my own music,” Wright says. “But I guess I never had the trust in myself until the past few years.”
Wright, who grew up playing piano, and studied classical music and jazz, was always drawn to pop and indie songwriters of a more lyrical bent. But she never learned to lead a band like musicians she loved: artists like Feist or Sharon Van Etten. It was intimidating, Wright says. And then, when the Covid-19 pandemic slowed her work life to a crawl, she found herself with ample time and no excuses. She put away the piano, picked up a guitar and began to teach herself to play—naming the burgeoning project for something joyful: Wright’s go-to order at the old-school diners and ice cream parlours she seeks out wherever she lands. “It’s a childlike joy that I can purchase for myself,” Wright says. “I'd much rather turn to that than a cigarette or a shot of whiskey.”
Small Shake has taken many forms: It was born as a solo project in Seattle, rebuilt in Portland as a basement-bound band, and then fully realized in Wright’s current home of Los Angeles, where she has constructed a versatile all-woman band for live shows and collaborated with producer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Pelletier (Fur Trader) in the studio. Together, Wright and Andrew play every note on Small Shake’s debut EP, Platonics, save for Chris Shuttleworth’s trombones on the final track.
Platonics was largely written during the native Seattlite’s seven years in that city’s music scene. As the EP's title suggests, these songs are written about friends. If they sound intimate–even romantic–well, that's also true. “I think it's because most of my songs are born out of conversations I wish I could have, things I wish I could say to people because they affected me deeply,” Wright says.
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.
While some of the subjects of these songs have come and gone from Wright’s life, she doesn’t use the artistic reflection to drag anyone through the mud. “If a person was able to touch my life, I believe I'll always hold on to an element of the love we once shared,” she says. “So even when I'm writing from a place of pain, hurt or misunderstanding, I feel like the song itself stands as a testament to the importance of that person in my life. I want to work out that puzzle so I can ultimately heal–and bitterness can be a block.”
One of those relationships, addressed throughout three of the EP’s songs, was a more complicated puzzle for Wright to work out than others. “I think nearly every queer person has a distinct memory of discovering that their adoration for a friend went beyond the limits of platonic,” she says. Songs and stories about first queer loves have helped Wright to navigate her own experience, and she weaved hers into these songs.
The West Coast cities Wright has called home in the past decade have also informed Platonics—almost as much as its characters. While Seattle is at the heart of Platonics, “Historical Event” was written in Portland, and the EP’s rich blend of expansive and lo-fi sound was intimately shaped by the collaboration with LA’s Pelletier.
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.”
She still ponders at what took Small Shake so long to emerge, but she knows that her confidence eventually came from seeing talented women take stages all around her.
“I want to say ‘I'm a musician’ and not feel like a phony,” Wright says. “I want to learn and absorb and practice and grow and be a part of this community: not just behind the scenes, but an artist in my own right.”
It's been a long time coming, but Small Shake is finally here. The awe and the wonder remain.
-Written by Casey Jarman
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Spotify
Tidal
TikTok
YouTube
Aarin Wright has explored every nook and cranny of the independent music world. The Washington state native has worked for two 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 on stage.
Until now. Until Small Shake.
“I always had an itch to play my own music,” Wright says. “But I guess I never had the trust in myself until the past few years.”
Wright, who grew up playing piano, and studied classical music and jazz, was always drawn to pop and indie songwriters of a more lyrical bent. But she never learned to lead a band like musicians she loved: artists like Feist or Sharon Van Etten. It was intimidating, Wright says. And then, when the Covid-19 pandemic slowed her work life to a crawl, she found herself with ample time and no excuses. She put away the piano, picked up a guitar and began to teach herself to play—naming the burgeoning project for something joyful: Wright’s go-to order at the old-school diners and ice cream parlours she seeks out wherever she lands. “It’s a childlike joy that I can purchase for myself,” Wright says. “I'd much rather turn to that than a cigarette or a shot of whiskey.”
Small Shake has taken many forms: It was born as a solo project in Seattle, rebuilt in Portland as a basement-bound band, and then fully realized in Wright’s current home of Los Angeles, where she has constructed a versatile all-woman band for live shows and collaborated with producer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Pelletier (Fur Trader) in the studio. Together, Wright and Andrew play every note on Small Shake’s debut EP, Platonics, save for Chris Shuttleworth’s trombones on the final track.
Platonics was largely written during the native Seattlite’s seven years in that city’s music scene. As the EP's title suggests, these songs are written about friends. If they sound intimate–even romantic–well, that's also true. “I think it's because most of my songs are born out of conversations I wish I could have, things I wish I could say to people because they affected me deeply,” Wright says.
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.
While some of the subjects of these songs have come and gone from Wright’s life, she doesn’t use the artistic reflection to drag anyone through the mud. “If a person was able to touch my life, I believe I'll always hold on to an element of the love we once shared,” she says. “So even when I'm writing from a place of pain, hurt or misunderstanding, I feel like the song itself stands as a testament to the importance of that person in my life. I want to work out that puzzle so I can ultimately heal–and bitterness can be a block.”
One of those relationships, addressed throughout three of the EP’s songs, was a more complicated puzzle for Wright to work out than others. “I think nearly every queer person has a distinct memory of discovering that their adoration for a friend went beyond the limits of platonic,” she says. Songs and stories about first queer loves have helped Wright to navigate her own experience, and she weaved hers into these songs.
The West Coast cities Wright has called home in the past decade have also informed Platonics—almost as much as its characters. While Seattle is at the heart of Platonics, “Historical Event” was written in Portland, and the EP’s rich blend of expansive and lo-fi sound was intimately shaped by the collaboration with LA’s Pelletier.
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.”
She still ponders at what took Small Shake so long to emerge, but she knows that her confidence eventually came from seeing talented women take stages all around her.
“I want to say ‘I'm a musician’ and not feel like a phony,” Wright says. “I want to learn and absorb and practice and grow and be a part of this community: not just behind the scenes, but an artist in my own right.”
It's been a long time coming, but Small Shake is finally here. The awe and the wonder remain.
-Written by Casey Jarman