At its farthest west, Sunset Boulevard meets the Pacific Ocean, concluding 24 miles of one of the most famous roads in America with a postcard view of the world’s largest body of water.
You must travel east, and wind through the upper-class greenery of Brentwood, past UCLA and the base of the Hollywood Hills, and along West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip to arrive at the four-and-a-half mile icon of fame and opportunity that is Hollywood, a stretch mythologized in classic films, evoking terms like “big break” and “name in lights” to transplants arriving in busloads, ready to be discovered and banking on luck.
Leaving Hollywood, though, Sunset Boulevard doglegs south. For these final six miles, the street becomes the main thoroughfare for one of Los Angeles’ few genuine neighborhoods, where cars share the road with bicycles, dogs join their owners at crowded cafes, billboards alternate between Spanish and English, the late Elliott Smith’s infamous Figure 8 mural survives, and taco trucks, fruit stands, and other little perks pop up intermittently so that New Yorkers, Chicagoans, Austinites, and inhabitants of every other major city can take them for granted. In Los Angeles, the scenery of Silver Lake and Echo Park is more an exception than a rule, with its artists relying on hard work and community support as a means to success, leaving the “big breaks” for the dusty old VHS films sold in bulk at the Salvation Army.
On this mostly commercial stretch of Sunset, Local Natives have turned an abandoned building into a modest rehearsal and recording space. The small unit, perched on a small hill above the busy street, appears featureless on the outside save for a fenced-in patio to buffer the ceaseless road traffic below. Inside, the space is humble, with microphones and spare music accessories strewn with little order. There is a beat-up quality to the building, stemming from prior years of neglect, though soundproofing on the walls, a stocked kitchen, and a working bathroom fit all the band’s current needs. Still, with most of their instruments packed in their van from their previous night’s KCRW performance, little of the workspace resembles the scene a year earlier, when the band returned from the holidays to continue work on their sophomore album, Hummingbird, set for release on January 29th. Their hope in returning to their building on Sunset was for a fresh start, following a 2011 that fell short of their creative expectations.
“It ended up taking a little while for us to find our footing and develop what would be the sound of Hummingbird,” recalls singer/guitarist Taylor Rice, the first band member present at our scheduled meeting time and the most sight-recognizable with his Tombstone mustache. “We kept pushing and experimenting, trying to expand the palette of the sounds, as well as the arrangement techniques.”
One song would become the focus for singer/keyboardist Kelcey Ayer and singer/guitarist Ryan Hahn at this first session of 2012, a samba-leaning, Ayer-penned tune titled “You & I”.
“I was always trying to push this vision of the song and it just wasn’t working out,” Ayer explains after his wife leaves him at the door, sandwich in hand. His careful manner of speech and reflective Hummingbird songwriting speak to his maturity, no matter how much it looks like his mom just dropped him off at school.
And though he definitely is more talkative after he gets some food in him, he is just as playful and irreverent as his bandmates when drummer Matt Frazier arrives, completing the foursome. Small talk centered around last night’s performance fills the space, and they are sure to include me, all while opening windows, cleaning off chairs, and gathering trash to make the space, and myself, comfortable. It was a familiar invitation into the Local Natives fraternity, one usually offered at their concert or on their album, lasting until the lights come up or the record ends. Now the invitation has extended here to their little space on Sunset, at least until we finish discussing their new album, and the long road they took to make it.
As the pair struggled with a solution for “You & I”, a sudden “breakthrough” resulted in them finishing the song that same night, a memory that perks up the often-silent Frazier, who adds, “We all got really excited about it, and a lot of songs came from that excitement.”
Ayer agrees, noting from that moment, “the next three months saw us writing half of the record. [‘and You & I’] made it okay to explore some more synthetic sounding places.”
In a later interview, producer Aaron Dessner notes the importance of the song from a more detached perspective, seeing “You & I” as “the biggest departure sonically for them but not in a trivial way. It works so well as a song and the sound world feels like a natural evolution for them, even if it is quite synthetic.”
The song, no longer a samba, opens Hummingbird, and it’s Ayer’s all-in vocals that sell both the song and the album from his very first cry of the title. And, despite the band’s pride in the song’s aesthetics, Ayer’s lyrics are equally crucial, grappling with uncertainty, acknowledging the fear that comes from “places we don’t know,” places both internal and external.
Months later, Local Natives would leave their Los Angeles homes and travel north to Montreal to track Hummingbird, then continue east to record the album with Dessner in Brooklyn. The drive into the unknown forces growth and adaptation by removing elements of comfort and routine, revealing a part of yourself that was missing, illuminating priorities that familiarity and stability tend to mask.
“The vibe of the whole record for us was trying to get out of our comfort zone and try something new,” says Ayer, well aware that sometimes the road turns sharply without warning, and adaptation becomes less about growing and more about surviving.
“We originally wanted to go to Berlin,” says Rice, of the decision to track in Montreal. This acknowledgment stirs a frenzy of simultaneously shouted ideas and suggestions that were toyed with for the initial tracking sessions. “We almost went to Sweden” is followed by “I wanted to go to Belize,” along with multiple answers lost in the commotion and laughter.
“We wanted to leave L.A. because we had been here for a year,” Rice explains, speaking quickly like he’s given this speech 100 times. The band’s travels are a pillar in the discussion of Hummingbird, but some local fans have reacted to the decision poorly, and Rice seems tired of defending it.
“I mean, we made most of the record here, we wrote most of it here,” he continues, “it started to come out, like, ‘You moved to New York to make this record.’ That’s not true at all. We wrote it here. But, we wanted to get out of L.A. to be away from distractions and also put ourselves in the state to be open and push ourselves. I think going to a new location, putting yourself in that environment, can affect that in you.”
Frazier says, “We just wanted to go somewhere.”
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The band met Dessner while opening for his group, The National, on their tour behind 2010′s High Violet in late-2011 and Frazier remembers joking with Dessner during the tour about hypothetical recordings, trading opinions back-and-forth with “‘If I was making a record, I’d do this or that,’” not expecting to be working together just months later.”
“I think our trust in Aaron stemmed from the fact that he comes from a similar situation,” Frazier continues, “obviously on a much larger scale, but he’s a songwriter in a collaborative band that we all really respect and love.”
And Frazier means collaborative band. Each member of Local Natives have votes on all songwriting and career decisions, with Rice calling the process “super democratic,” noting that “each have to be enthusiastic about a song, and that can be hard because we all are a bit disparate in what we want.”
“So, in those terms,” Rice explains, “when we hit our mark, we are thrilled.”
The band considered a number of producers initially, but Rice found the idea of inviting a stranger into Local Natives’ creative process “a foreign concept” and “just weird.” From its inception, the band has maintained a DIY approach whenever possible, from creating their own album art to taking self-portraits for press photos.
“With producers, it’s usually what they do for their living,” Rice elaborates, “and it was comforting to us that this isn’t what Aaron does for his living. He does not have to do this by any means at all, and he’s just working with us because he wants to.”
The band approached Dessner about producing and found him not just interested, but genuinely excited about the project. Rice describes Dessner’s lack of pressure on the band as an extension of his own experience as a collaborative musician, careful not to impede on their delicate dynamic.
“His approach was ‘This is your guys’ band, and your record, and we’re going to do what you want, with me here to help you with that, and help you find keys when you need them,’” Rice recalls, and as with all members who speak about Dessner, reverence is present, as is a sense of intimacy. “He became a sort of fifth band member for those couple months that we were making the record together.”
Dessner’s passion drove the band through the recording process, but he puts this in a different light, noting: “I can’t really work on music that I’m not excited about or with people who I don’t feel strongly about — it just wouldn’t work. I was excited when they asked me because I knew I could connect to the music and hopefully help make it better and I already knew they were great people to spend time with.”
Dessner’s attraction to the band derives from the same place my initial comfort with them stemmed; a “warmth and sincerity” they bring as a group. Dessner remembers their demeanor on the road as “still behaving like four really close, old friends,” putting the observation in perspective by noting ”that’s rare on tour — usually people get overwhelmed by the exhaustion and pressure of it and just shut down.”
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Taking the road away from Los Angeles was designed to stimulate ideas through unfamiliar experiences, but what resulted was a surprise that the band may have needed. Previously, the creation of Gorilla Manor was characterized by the band’s co-habitation in the titular Orange County home, a tradition that had not extended to the writing of Hummingbird. Though they did have the Sunset space to meet up, the band no longer lived under one roof. Now, on the road, four friends preparing to track the album in Montreal and record it in Brooklyn, the change in scenery was rekindling a familiar working environment.
“For Gorilla Manor, living together, it helped being able to always bounce ideas off each other,” Hahn explains. Hahn is the most vocal proponent for the day-to-day mundanities that go into being a band, seeming to get enjoyment out of every aspect of the lifestyle, from the rituals of touring to a pet project of archiving drum sounds from the ‘60s he might one day sample (it paid off on “Three Months”). If forced to choose one of the Local Natives as a life-long music industry contributor, it would be Hahn without hesitation.
He continues, “With the recording of Hummingbird, we were again living together and relying on each other. It felt like we had gone back to our initial routine, where I’d wake up, make breakfast with these guys, talk about music and what we are going to do for the day, and maybe even be like ‘Hey, I have an idea’ and in the living room play a bit or work on lyrics. That was really cool. So, when we say ‘get away from distractions,’ there were still tons of distractions in New York, but at least we were all living together again.”
The band grows lively at recalling their Brooklyn stay, taking as much joy remembering the experiences surrounding the recording as they do in recalling the work that was done there. In fact, lasting memories and living in the moment are ideals that Local Natives place high stock in, cognizant that this lifestyle could end at any time.
Intending to start work on their second album early in 2011, opportunity after opportunity was handed to them, most impossible to reject. Between performances with an orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Take-Away Shows, first-ever gigs in Mexico, and numerous festival appearances, work on the follow-up to their 100,000-copy selling debut was repeatedly pushed back.
To their astonishment, the band graced the stages of their biggest venues yet as openers for Arcade Fire for their pre-Coachella leg of the band’s tour behind 2010′s The Suburbs. The experience was “inspiring” for all the members, with Hahn impressed that “(Arcade Fire) haven’t compromised and they still do things their own way,” avoiding the clichés and indulgences that often come with an arena-sized audience.
“They really deserve everything that they have achieved,” he proclaims, “and it was awesome to see a band that still has its integrity doing something so huge.”
For Local Natives, comparisons to former tour mates The National and Arcade Fire come often, though they hardly ape these bands. Rather, Local Natives look like able students when placed in a learning experience. Dessner’s ability to take a big moment and shine a spotlight on the right combination of sounds, achieving huge peaks tastefully, is one of those “keys” he lent to Hummingbird from The National’s toolbox. The “National Grandeur” boosts the emotional bullets of the album, while never taking away from Local Native’s own voice.
Elsewhere, Hummingbird tracks “Wooly Mammoth” and “Black Balloons” are both arena-ready stabs at the anthems that Arcade Fire is known for. But Local Natives’ lyrics are decidedly more intimate and personal, never attempting a connection through political and social avenues. In hindsight, 2011’s detours proved necessary in the development of the band, with the possibility of headlining bigger venues becoming a reality and the foursome, now with tutelage from standard setters, able to follow the brake lights ahead of them until the road opened up.
Matching that year of highlight-reel events is inconceivable, but living in a room normally occupied by The National’s singer Matt Berninger and having another member of that band recording their album was surreal enough to make anything unimaginable seem possible. It’s one thing learning from a band on tour, it’s another thing to move in. These situations are beyond the goals of reasonable folks, and as Hahn had previously said about Arcade Fire, it’s hard to believe these dreams are coming true for Local Natives for reasons other than the fact they deserve it.
Eventually, some behind the scenes stories from this living arrangement begin to surface, with Ayer admitting, “We weren’t completely in their way, but there were times where we had to tread lightly.”
“[Dessner and his wife] had a newborn,” he explains, “so when we were upstairs we’d take our shoes off and try to be quiet, and we’d get texts in the middle of the night if we were being too loud and we’d feel so bad, but, really, he is such a nice guy…”
Dessner’s “nice guy” persona is ingrained in the band, with that personality trait mentioned repeatedly, almost instinctually in some strange Pavlovian response. Likewise, Local Natives are not the type to toss T.V.’s from hotel windows. Walking kind of loud was the biggest friction of their cohabitation, and their nightly battle to avoid disturbing their hosts even resulted in the song title for “Heavy Feet”.
Dessner, though, more readily recalls the long nights and creative struggles that characterize most recording sessions, making the band’s fondness for the period telling of their youth and the ease that young bodies endure strenuous mental and physical challenges.
“It’s always difficult to make a record because at some point you hit a wall,” says Dessner, assured that Local Natives felt the rigor of recording, ”and they all looked a little pale for a while and had very little sleep.”
“Through all of it,” he adds, “I was impressed that they were always kind to each other, even when they disagreed.”
When recalling Brooklyn, the band focuses their experience around the family atmosphere that spread beyond the Dessner’s house and into the Ditmas Park community. Aaron’s brother and bandmate Bryce lives on the same block, along with other friends and family, resulting in regular barbecues, frequent visitors, and a community that welcomed the Los Angelenos in with open arms.
“Ditmas Park is a very laid back and quiet neighborhood,” Dessner explains, drawing a distinction away from the pace in Los Angeles. “I think that calm and quiet was good for them, as you do lose your mind a little bit when making a good record. At least they lost their minds in a nice neighborhood and could wander around the park and listen to the birds.”
Local Natives’ Silver Lake is a lot closer to Ditmas Park than the Los Angeles of, say, Kendrick Lamar, or Jim Morrison, or Odd Future, or Axl Rose. In Silver Lake, the band fits neatly into a small, artistic, multi-cultural world that can offer a sense of belonging through its communal features, or at least provide a sense of comfort in its familiarity.
The band can often be seen traveling as a unit, arriving together at the Echoplex or enjoying a late breakfast at The Alcove, putting on display a bond between four band members that isn’t as common as many assume. Whether in Los Angeles or on the road, Local Natives have become their own small community. It wasn’t Ditmas Park or the family vibes or the neighborhood that made Brooklyn feel like home, it was the same connection that Dessner saw in an opening band, that I observed in the matter of minutes at their Sunset Boulevard rehearsal space. It wouldn’t be surprising if they could create a sensation of home wherever they wind up, as long as they are all there together.
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“You don’t mind if I tell this story real quick?” Hahn asks Rice. Hahn continues anyway.
“The last day in Brooklyn, the very last day,” Hahn begins, “we were about to go mix the record in Connecticut, and we were like ‘Ah dude, we got through this whole process without destroying anything, this is great.’”
Hahn uses exaggerated voices when imitating the dialogue of others, a quirk that occurs frequently in the interview and makes talking with him a joy. His setup hits Ayer unexpectedly, and Ayer combusts in a fit of laughter, as if overwhelmed by a rush of memories, shouting with a disbelief that hasn’t faded in the months since the incident, “We were leaving! We were literally about to get in the car and go!”
“Yeah, we were leaving,” Hahn resumes, shaking his head and losing Ayer to recollection-fueled giggles. “You know those Kombucha crazy hippy drinks? So, Taylor has one and it has, like, Chia seeds in it. He goes to unscrew it and apparently it was kind of shaken up and it was making a little fizzy noise. And Taylor is like ‘ok?’ but he still continues to open it and it just goes “BOOM! and shoots up, like, 10 feet in the air and covers the entire ceiling in this disgusting, sticky, gelatinous drink with chia seeds. It was stuck to everything, on these white walls…”
Laughing along, Frazier also gives in to the memory, adding: “all over Aaron’s nice Danish Modern kitchen.”
Rice interjects, “It’s hard to over-exaggerate how insane the explosion of this Kombucha was. It was like a shotgun shell coming out, but the blast radius was enormous. And, we’re, like, running out the door with our stuff.”
“And Aaron never gets riled up,” Hahn finishes, once again enforcing the image of Aaron Dessner that runs close to that of a saint, or sage, or sensei. “I could see he was close, but he never gets mad and was like ‘it’s okay, it’s okay’ as he’s cleaning our mess from the ceiling. I don’t know if he had to paint over it, but it definitely stained his ceiling.”
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When they returned west to Los Angeles, Local Natives began a calm period before their commitments in 2013 that would call them away for another year. Scattered shows, including the CMJ debut of their new material, allowed the band to acclimate to the miles ahead, and process the many miles behind. With Hummingbird now complete, the album reflects both their willingness to push their boundaries, as well as the curves beyond their control.
While writing the album, without invitation, the band split with founding member and bassist Andy Hamm, a move Ayer says “had to happen,” making the band “happier and stronger,” with the unit now “whole and on the same page.”
“It changed our writing process,” adds Hahn. “It really opened us up to writing songs in different ways, and challenged us to experiment with different sounds.”
“This record in general pushes for a more attentive listener, a more attentive audience experience,” Rice insists. “At this point we’ve played ten shows since finishing, and we’re playing mostly new material with a few old songs. It’s been interesting to see how the live show has sort of shifted. I like how it integrates and I think the two sets of songs do work well together, but now it’s more of an in depth experience.”
“Colombia”, written by Ayer after the death of his Colombian mother, finds the young man trying to cope, shouting questions nightly into the abyss, asking if he is “giving enough,” and if he is “loving enough,” eventually invoking the name Patricia in a turn that’s heartbreaking and open and brave. The questions he asks are impossible to answer, reminders of the fleeting nature of both life and love.
“Dessner called the track a ‘tent pole song’ for the album,’” Hahn remembers, questioning himself and looking to his band members for assurance that he’s used the correct term.
“The ‘tent-pole’ metaphor is just something I sometimes joke about in our band,” Dessner confirms. “Every record has a group of songs which define it or hold it up — not that the others are weaker — just there are certain ones which lead the way aesthetically or songwriting-wise and help guide the others I guess. Both ‘You & I’ and ‘Colombia’ feel like those kind of songs for this record.”
Ayer’s loss extends beyond the single song, as Dessner notes it’s “the source of the more emotional quality of a few of the songs on the album.” In live performances, “Colombia” has been dedicated to Ayer‘s mother, still, the band doesn’t talk directly to me about tragedy, using the word “personal” as a substitute, sparing painful stories for at least one afternoon, and allowing the album to speak for itself.
Rightly so, Hummingbird’s title is lifted from the words of “Colombia”. Dessner sees this as “a new dimension” for Local Natives, ”channeling this sense of loss or grieving into songs which are ultimately cathartic,” both for the band and for the listener.
It’s a pragmatic turn for Ayer, and a mature one.
“Originally, ‘Colombia’ was eight-minutes long,” Hahn continues, “and it was kind of all over the map. It had different drum beats and we had to just mess around with a ton of elements. And when we finally got it, it felt like an accomplishment. It felt so good.”
“It felt like a weight had been lifted,” Rice agrees. A slight pause takes over the room.
Ayer breaks the silence, admitting “I was holding on for the eight-minute version.”
And after the group’s laughter subsides, Ayer quietly adds that “it really sounded good.”
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After three years of touring and a pilgrimage to the opposite coast in search of a creative jumpstart already under their belt, plus at least a year of nomadic wandering ahead, the connection that the band retains within Los Angeles is understandably damaged.
Hahn feels this most: “For me, coming back and trying to meet up with old friends whose lives have gone on and who haven’t had the same type of experiences that I’ve had, it can be hard to relate to each other. Being on the road, you have this schedule where everything is laid out for you, and you are always on the move. Now, here you are… in one place.”
After the Gorilla Manor touring wound down, Hahn describes “a total mind warp.”
“I almost felt anxious and ready to go back on tour again,” he adds. “We just came back from a short tour recently, and even going away for just three and a half weeks, it still feels weird coming back home again. It seems like it’s different for each person, though,” also noting that he is most at home when the band is engaged in their work.
Touring has also bewitched Rice, with him noting a drug-like euphoria that performing creates, and in which its absence can feel akin to coming down.
“Playing live is something we all really love,” notes Rice. “We love to tour, we love to travel, and we love playing shows. So, it has been an adjustment to sort of put roots down again in Los Angeles. It has had both ups and downs.”
Ayer is the most comfortable in their current state, with his new wife living in the area. And while it’s precarious to maintain healthy relationships living as a touring musician, Ayer puts a spin on it, kidding that his relationship with his bride is so great because she feels “more like his mistress,” with the band filling the role of a wife.
“All the arguments with us and all the fun with her,” jokes Rice.
The band may be growing apart from Silver Lake, but the area still provides support to the band with massive turnouts at their events. This grassroots mentality pushes Local Natives further in attempts to earn everything they receive, be it success, money, or simply steady jobs.
“We don’t take things for granted and we try to remain humble about the fact that we get to be musicians and what that means in today’s world,” says Rice. “We had so much success on the first record, but we are all pretty ambitious and we really believed in the music, so it wasn’t like ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe this happened.’ But, at the same time, it did surpass what you even allow yourself to dream of when you’re in a bedroom working on a song. So, it’s one of those things where you don’t want to expect something…”
He trails off, considers, and restarts. “I mean, you can’t expect something out of this industry.“
“The end goal that everyone agrees on is that we’d love to have a career,” chimes Ayer.
Finally, Rice backtracks, “I think we do have the expectation where we think we can take it to the next step in our career because it would just follow the lead of the music for us. “
These expectations are contingencies, logic problems, plans that should see results if they follow their current map, essentially earning both what they already have, and what they still want. They also discount the fact that Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake is the same street as Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, that every success story is in some part a fairy tale, aided by chance, right place at right time, a blind roll of the dice. Local Natives must learn to balance the two sides of the same street, and Rice reassures.
“If we make it,” he says, “we know that we’ll be the luckiest people in the world.”
Photography by Debi Del Grande and artwork by Cap Blackard.
“For Gorilla Manor, living together, it helped being able to always bounce ideas off each other,” Hahn explains. Hahn is the most vocal proponent for the day-to-day mundanities that go into being a band, seeming to get enjoyment out of every aspect of the lifestyle, from the rituals of touring to a pet project of archiving drum sounds from the ‘60s he might one day sample (it paid off on “Three Months”). If forced to choose one of the Local Natives as a life-long music industry contributor, it would be Hahn without hesitation.
