The great thing about the Internet and this digital age that we live in is the ability of finding new music on the drop of a dime. As Brian Eno wrote “all music all the time”. Give me a connection to the World Wide Web and within the hour I will most certainly find something worth listening to. But there is a small catch with this democratization: boy is there a lot of mediocre shit out there which is dressed to impress by means of a digital camouflage. Many a time I have been warned that one band or another would melt my face with their musical dexterity or imagination only to be let down when I saw them live. And between you and me, anti-face melting masks are expensive. And you start losing faith. And you start doubting what you hear. But then every so often a band like Local Natives comes along.
Local Natives are what bands should be like. Not only is their music a sweet melancholic aural hope of harmonic layers which evokes and coerces you to feel empathy for us humans [see; Airplanes, a song that Kelcey Ayer (vocals, keys) wrote for his late grandfather] but they are also welcoming, engaging, and friendly.
Some people play music to expunge demons, some so they have something to turn to in times of trouble [when Mother Mary isn’t around especially], some because they find themselves socially inadaquate and can only make music, and others because it comes naturally to them and they must share it with the world. Local Natives are the latter. And they are joyous, even when desperate [see; Shape Shifter and Cards And Quarters].
I walk into the room that their people had reserved for us about 10 minutes early. As they come in and sit down, I take out the tape recorder…
BCR: You guys recorded your debut album Gorilla Manor with Raymond Richards at Red Rocket Glare Studios. You named the record after the house you all lived in and you worked in a studio which, as described on its website, has a homely feel to it. Is home a theme of the album, and is home important to you guys?
Ryan Hahn:I think it was budgetary restrictions [grins]. We had heard how he [Raymond Richards] had been putting out some great stuff just from… literally, it’s just a garage in his backyard…
Taylor Rice: What I would say, where that applies, is that, for us, we’ve been playing together for almost three years before we made this album, maybe it was two at that point (it’s been over three now), but moving in together, and all getting a house together and a home, definitely made us coalesce as a group and our sound come together. So I think in that sense our music has a very communal and collaborative vibe to it and I think that as a result of us living together in that kind of home environment you were mentioning.
BCR: Did you have other ideas for producers to work on the record? I had read that you were big fans of Broken Social Scene, so maybe having like David Newfeld?
All: [They laughed and have a moment of general hysterics] Oh yeah, that would have been awesome.
Matt Frazier: We would love to work with someone like that, it’s just at that time period for us we’re still, even now, such a new band, you know, it’s kind of out of our range, so we just shopped around in our local market. Raymond was a very great option for us so…
Taylor Rice: I mean we self-funded the record so… we didn’t have a label or anything.
BCR: You guys do all your own artwork. Does it represent your music in any particular way?
Ryan Hahn:I’d say so.
Taylor Rice: They [pointing towards Andy Hamm (bassist) and Matt Frazier (drums)] handle most of our artwork so they should probably talk about it specifically. But our music is an extension of who we are and our artwork is very important to us. We want to make sure we handle all of that because we think it’s also an extension of who we are.
BCR: I noticed that you guys work a lot in black and white and then you add a little bit of colour. Is that done on purpose or is representative or is just graphically pleasing?
Andy Hamm: Yeah, I mean, we do it, so I would hope [laughs] that it ties in with the music cause we write the music too. I don’t know if it’s like… there is meaning behind everything that we have up. It’s just like piece by piece… some of them are just random images we like or we think play well with the event or with the music and other ones go a little bit deeper and are song meanings or personalities within the band.
BCR: This thing of you guys organizing your own dates at SXSW. You printed your own posters and put the maps on the back and you distributed them while there… how did you guys book the SXSW dates?
Ryan Hahn:We played everything from a bike shop that was two miles off the strip to one showcase, which was really cool. It was nine shows and just chaos.
Matt Frazier: The way it worked out was, I mean, anybody can really go to SXSW, but only… like… they have the official showcases as well and we had submitted months before and we didn’t get any word back about the showcases, so we thought oh well we might as well start booking little smaller parties and whatnot. And then literally two weeks before the festival itself we got a confirmation on an official showcase ‘cause someone had dropped out and they called us and put us in this slot…
Ryan Hahn:And our showcase was like at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., it ended up being after everyone had already gone home. But it was still memorable.
Taylor Rice: But that show was awesome.
Matt Frazier: Yeah, it was one of my favourite ones.
BCR: Airplanes talks about family and the story about your [Kelcey Ayer’s] grandfather, what is Camera Talk [one of the 7” released through Chess Club] about?
Taylor Rice: Camera Talk is one that initially stemmed from experiences that I had travelling abroad for the first time and what it was for me was a sense of euphoria really. There was this time where I just felt so happy and lucky to be exactly where I was experiencing this new aspect of life, this new slice of life. Ryan came in and collaborated on it with me lyrically. Then we brought in a trip that the band took to Catalina pretty shortly before we made the record as well, which was a really cool trip for us and, you know, we had been living together, and we’d been best friends for a while at this point, but it was really just a cool trip for us just to get away. Catalina is an island off the coast of California kind of near to us which is very beautiful, a chance to get away and go into nature, so its speaking of those times…
BCR: This thing of the three part harmonies [a prominent feature in all of their records] does this come from a particular musical background? Where you guys in capella groups or choirs or is it just the music you listened to?
Ryan Hahn:That’s the funny thing, with us at least; I don’t think any of us really has any classical training of any kind. We’ll sit down and try to write harmonies on the midi piano, you know, and he… [points towards Kelcey] he barely knows the notes on the piano...
Kelcey Ayer: You forget those years at Juilliard’s...
Andy Hamm: It’s just most of it is done by ear. It’s done by feel and sort of jamming out parts and harmonies and melodies until they are dug into the ground. It’s not like one person is ‘Oh, do this in a G major scale’ and then write it down. None of us are to that point.
Taylor Rice: No one has ever said ‘Let’s do a sixth instead of the third’, like literally we don’t know music theory. We all wish we do.
Kelcey Ayer: Yeah, it would make things easier.
Ryan Hahn:Yeah, but I mean it really stemmed from the way we started writing. I think our writing process is really unique in that its super-collaborative and everyone has their hand in it. A lot of the time, since we live together, we’ll work on a song by just knocking on someone’s door, and then everyone just comes to the same room and works around the piano with the guitars and stuff so…
