With Gorilla Manor, the debut album of L.A.’s Local Natives, the band epitomizes the sunny side of L.A.’s indie rock sound: catchy clean-tone guitar riffs, 1960s Laurel Canyon vocal harmonies, and stampedes of hand percussion that lend a faint Afropop twinge to the music. While the band may not breaking any new musical ground here, Gorilla Manor is an exhilarating and uplifting marriage of sophisticated arrangements and gleeful pop that makes you want to quit your day job and cruise the Pacific Coast Highway with all of your windows down.
The most obvious comparisons that come to mind are Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses. Like those bands, Local Natives mixe rootsy vocal harmonies that reference the country-twinged sounds of The Band as much as they do The Beach Boys. The upfront presence of percussion and overall communal sound, however, add a tribal element to the music and a twist to the formula. One can imagine stripped-down versions of these songs performed as sing-alongs at a Venice Beach drum circle (I mean that in a good way). During the band’s live shows, the sweaty performers move between their respective instruments and percussion instruments spattered across the stage.
There’s plenty of nuance in the music as well—“Who Knows, Who Cares” and “Stranger Things” are colored with touches of strings. Most of the songs move through a variety of textures, tempos, and breakdowns that keep the music from approaching any sort of stagnation. The complexity of the vocal harmonies and ever-changing arrangements make it clear that the band is much more than a happy-go-lucky SoCal collective. But at a time when so many indie bands focus on irony and intellect, Local Natives come across as five men bent on having the time of their lives.
An infectious sense of fun pervades the music, whether it be with the bouncing piano and gleeful shouts of “Airplanes,” the shouting breakdowns of “Sun Hands” and “Warning Sign” (a great take on the Talking Heads’ classic), or the summery bluegrass harmonies comprising the chorus of “Camera Talk.” It’s impossible to not have your mood lifted while listening to Gorilla Manor—the exuberance of the music, the propulsion of the rhythms, the nearly shouted vocal harmonies are too contagious. |