There’s restraint on Local Natives’ latest studio album.
“This is the rare band that’s a brotherhood, and it’s so important to us.”
These words might sound like they belong on a poster in the lift of some Silicon Valley office campus, but they’re from Nik Ewing, bass player of Local Natives and part of a quintet that has drawn strength from bonds they’d never realized they even had.
Along with comrades Taylor Rice (vocals, guitar), Kelcey Ayer (vocals, keys), Ryan Hahn (vocals, guitar) and Matt Frazier (drums), Ewing had released four albums prior to Time Will Wait For No One over a period stretching back to their 2009 debut Gorilla Manor, with its predecessor Violet Street coming out in 2019.
This constant sense of motion fostered the togetherness Local Natives each acknowledge is so important now but that lay unrecognised in the pre-pandemic existence, because when everything changed they changed too – with difficult, unforeseen consequences.
Taylor picks up the story: “All of a sudden, we stopped being in one another’s orbit for the first time since we were kids…we were coming apart at the seams.”
When the curtain lifted a little however, Local Natives collectively found a common new energy and purpose: “Time Will Wait For No One is about us finding our way back to each other, restarting the process as new people.”
Recorded at half-a-dozen studios in their home city of LA with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Spoon, Clairo), most of their sound’s common threads have been retained: the mellifluous instrumentation is more background than foreground, whilst the focus remains on the trio of voices harmonizing on material that glides.
There were some new inventions in terms of method, however. The titular opener was partially recorded outside in an Echo Park backyard with helicopters buzzing, a naked guitar weaving beneath the three vocalists in close harmony as they sung around a lone microphone.
The effect is surprisingly old school, a nostalgic sounding throwback which Hahn sums up with: “It’s a symbol of the album itself…about everything we’ve gone through apart and as brothers.”
Fraternity is a central theme: the airy closer Paradise for instance is a somber reflection of times when the only people you can rely on are those in closest proximity. With a lonely sounding piano motif and yearning strings, by its finale its disposition has swung back towards a bruised, shared kind of hope.
This, even Local Natives acknowledge though, is something of an outlier. Largely the band are happy to let the listener build their own mood; tracks like Empty Mansions, Just Before The Morning and Ava lodge in the same unassuming space as Parcels or Balthazar, rocking the boat ever so gently without making demands.
Those who prefer lean forward music should take an abridged trip. This short cut should feature the immaculate pop of Desert Snow and later Hourglass, the latter a ballad that pokes through some of the easygoing veneer, roughing the edges up enough to give the very real feelings the band are trying to express some depth.
The final request stop is NYE, a climb up in tempo in an attempt to depict the warmth and nerves of one time ending and another about to begin; it’s a rare moment in which Local Natives sound truly animated after having faced their natural ties being stretched to breaking point.
“This band is my family,” Ewing says in conclusion, “the art and music are just the cherry on top.”
Time Will Wait For No One is a truism nobody can ignore, but the vitality that revelation should bring surfaces too rarely here.