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Local Natives: Hummingbird

Contemplative but excellent album from Californian outfit

The Hot Press Newsdesk, 05 Feb 2013

Local Natives’ 2009 debut, Gorilla Manor, was this writer’s top album of that year, combining, as it did, the art rock of Arcade Fire with the immediacy of Bloc Party at their best. Their sophomore effort, Hummingbird, may have seen them lose a bassist but they’ve also gained a new sense of nuance and tone, mostly, we suspect, due to the presence of The National’s Aaron Dessner on production duties.

The perfect bridge between albums, ‘Heavy Feet’ showcases Matt Frazier’s frenetic drum tattoo, still such a cornerstonet of the Local Natives sound, alongside the perfect three-way harmonies that were a hallmark of Gorilla Manor.

The shimmery alt. pop of ‘Ceilings’ has summer hit writ large all over it, while ‘You & I’ is more soulful and contemplative than pretty much anything from their debut. ‘Breakers’, which, ahem, broke on the web back in November, goes from handclaps and syncopated rhythms to multi-layered guitars and serrated vocals, à la School Of Seven Bells, before morphing again into a slow-burning dream pop anthem. And you could go all year without hearing something as beautifully yearning as ‘Mt. Washington’.

The time-signatures throughout are weird and wonderful, nowhere moreso than on ‘Bowery’, whose weird rhythms and discordant guitars are seemingly at odds with the melody, and yet somehow it works beautifully. I have absolutely no idea what ‘Woolly Mammoth’ is about, but after the truly gorgeous cymbal crash on 49 seconds, which leads into the chorus, it’s immediately apparent that when the drums gallop and the guitars crash like planets colliding, Kelsey Ayer could be singing his shopping list and it would still be worth listening to.

While it’s less immediate than their gorgeous debut, with nothing as disarming as the aural slap-in-the-face that was ‘Sunhands’, Hummingbird is a slow burn that’s well worth cosying up to. After just three days, I’m is already falling in love with it: by April, it’ll be a full-on affair.



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