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Product Description
Review
Silver Lake five-piece Local Natives deliver their debut album after enjoying a decent degree of media coverage, especially throughout the blog world, much of which has concluded that the band could well follow in Fleet Foxes’ footsteps and take their brand of Americana-flecked indie-rock into the mainstream.
Much of the attention to come the band’s way has been generated by favourable reviews of their sets at this year’s South By Southwest conference, held in Austin, Texas back in March. Every year the multi-venue event – think the Camden Crawl on an epic scale (with better, and often bigger, bands) – produces a buzz band or two, and Local Natives impressed enough of the right people to qualify as a genuine One to Watch for 2009. And this album largely delivers on the promise.
The oddly titled Gorilla Manor features 12 tracks that successfully stir thoughts of a host of comparative ensembles – Band of Horses, O’Death, Pinback and, yes, Fleet Foxes – but Local Natives’ arrangements can express a cheery effervescence only sporadic in much of the aforementioned acts’ work. The a cappella breakdown of Sun Hands is an early example of this carefree attitude to composition – it’s completely out of place, yet feels entirely natural at the same time. Camera Talk flexes dub-kissed muscles midway through before breaking out a violin for some Arcade Fire-like strings-and-percussion splendour.
The band’s also perfectly capable of delivering big anthems strong on memorable hooks – the likes of Shape Shifter and album opener Wide Eyes are sure to swim around the listener’s head for days. And while this accessibility is largely down to the breakthrough exploits of forerunners, Local Natives’ evident ambition and accomplished execution of even the grandest ideas sets them in good stead to not only follow several leads, but stand out on their own before long.
Gorilla Manor is no classic – it’s too indebted to its makers’ influences for that. But it is a strong, striking debut that exceeds expectations and should open enough doors for the band to ensure that album two is immediately placed at the top of journalist must-listen-to piles and consumers’ to-buy lists alike. --Mike Diver
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Product Description
LOCAL NATIVES Gorilla Manor (2009 UK 12-track CD album featuring the debut long player from the Los Angeles indie rock quintet includes the singles Sun Hands Camera Talk and Airplanes digipak picture sleeve)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Other reviews have been quite thorough so no need to waffle. A really wonderful album, this. Vocal melodies are sweet and harmonies are spot on. Instrumentation is faultless and the album is simultaneously playful, heartbreaking and uplifting. Reminiscent of The Arcade Fire, Beach Boys Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes if you're looking for a reference point. A really superb album, standout tracks (for me) are: 'Who Knows Who Cares'(The video for which pretty much sums up their whole sound), 'Sun Hands' and 'Wide Eyes.'
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
4.5 stars
Do you ever find yourself putting put on an album listening to it only once and yet knowing that it is good and going to get better? A rare occurrence admittedly but one which you will experience with the wonderful "Gorilla Manor". The Wolf has comprehensively captured in his excellent review the various elements of what makes this album special. Clearly there are references to the Fleet Foxes, indeed the warm cover version of Talking Heads "Warning Sign" displays the wonderful harmonies so beloved of our bearded Seattle chums. Local Natives are nevertheless not the "Fleet Foxes lite" an accusation which has been bandied around in some reviews. In fact there is so much diversity in this album that in large parts it is a genuinely intriguing and uncategorisable affair. Check out the joyous single "Camera Talk" which owes as much to the Beach Boys, Bens Fold five and even Vampire Weekend. "Shapeshiter" one of the albums highlights with its searing harmonies and its gradually building force packs a huge punch. A key feature of this song is the hyperactive drumming of Matt Frazier and (I don't believe I'm about to say this) the excellent lead vocalist Taylor Rice does sometimes sound like a much rockier version of Jon Anderson of Yes which is the strangest compliment I have ever paid.
Throughout the album has a feel of summer and the sort of effervescence in songs which end up swimming around the listener's head for weeks at a time and make you constantly revisit the album. The two most guilty culprits in this regard are "Wide Eyes" with its great guitar backdrop making it probably the most rock based song on the album but all the time those harmonies are a tight as Alastair Darlings recent budget. "Sun Hands" is the albums ultimate highlight. Its worth checking out on the net the reviews of this band at this years SXSW 2010 festival where for the second year in a row they again stole the show and it is with "Sun Hands" that they encore. It has that quality common to great songs of the duality of complexity and simplicity at the same time. Listen to it on headphones and the layers reveal themselves and Taylor Rice's vocal absolutely nail the song from the opening where he sings -
"I climbed to the top of a hill
But I had just missed the sun
And although the descending arc was gone
Left behind were the traces that always follow along"
For the other songs read the reviews by Wolf and Mr Chinaski where they capture the all round quality of this album. Its probably not perfect and both "Sticky Thread" and "Cubism Dream" don't really push many buttons for me. A small point not be dwelled upon since quite rightly this East L.A. quintet are generating huge interest and it is a credit to the UK listeners that the album was taken up here where they signed to Infectious and released Gorilla Manor a good four months before it appeared in their homeland. All in all "Gorilla Manor" is an album which will repay repeated listens with a series of rich songs and three part harmonies to die for.
Do you ever find yourself putting put on an album listening to it only once and yet knowing that it is good and going to get better? A rare occurrence admittedly but one which you will experience with the wonderful "Gorilla Manor". The Wolf has comprehensively captured in his excellent review the various elements of what makes this album special. Clearly there are references to the Fleet Foxes, indeed the warm cover version of Talking Heads "Warning Sign" displays the wonderful harmonies so beloved of our bearded Seattle chums. Local Natives are nevertheless not the "Fleet Foxes lite" an accusation which has been bandied around in some reviews. In fact there is so much diversity in this album that in large parts it is a genuinely intriguing and uncategorisable affair. Check out the joyous single "Camera Talk" which owes as much to the Beach Boys, Bens Fold five and even Vampire Weekend. "Shapeshiter" one of the albums highlights with its searing harmonies and its gradually building force packs a huge punch. A key feature of this song is the hyperactive drumming of Matt Frazier and (I don't believe I'm about to say this) the excellent lead vocalist Taylor Rice does sometimes sound like a much rockier version of Jon Anderson of Yes which is the strangest compliment I have ever paid.
Throughout the album has a feel of summer and the sort of effervescence in songs which end up swimming around the listener's head for weeks at a time and make you constantly revisit the album. The two most guilty culprits in this regard are "Wide Eyes" with its great guitar backdrop making it probably the most rock based song on the album but all the time those harmonies are a tight as Alastair Darlings recent budget. "Sun Hands" is the albums ultimate highlight. Its worth checking out on the net the reviews of this band at this years SXSW 2010 festival where for the second year in a row they again stole the show and it is with "Sun Hands" that they encore. It has that quality common to great songs of the duality of complexity and simplicity at the same time. Listen to it on headphones and the layers reveal themselves and Taylor Rice's vocal absolutely nail the song from the opening where he sings -
"I climbed to the top of a hill
But I had just missed the sun
And although the descending arc was gone
Left behind were the traces that always follow along"
For the other songs read the reviews by Wolf and Mr Chinaski where they capture the all round quality of this album. Its probably not perfect and both "Sticky Thread" and "Cubism Dream" don't really push many buttons for me. A small point not be dwelled upon since quite rightly this East L.A. quintet are generating huge interest and it is a credit to the UK listeners that the album was taken up here where they signed to Infectious and released Gorilla Manor a good four months before it appeared in their homeland. All in all "Gorilla Manor" is an album which will repay repeated listens with a series of rich songs and three part harmonies to die for.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Abso-blinkin-lutely loving this every-which-way.
You're going to love it too. Promise.
As incandescent a bunch of songs as I've heard this year and
there are a whole healthy dozen of them to be getting on with.
Local Natives hail from Silverlake, California, U.S.A.
They are Taylor Rice (guitar/vocals), Kelcey Ayer (keyboards/vocals),
Ryan Hahn (guitar/vocals), Andy Hamm (bass) and Matt Frazier (drums)
and together they make a distinctive and beautiful sound.
This is tricky stuff to pin-down so I'll leave it for someone more
gifted in the realms of genre sub-divisions to fix this for us later.
What I found here transcends genre in so many ways.
It is BIG music. Heart-warming music. Enveloping and uplifting music.
The melodies are complex and absorbing; the singing fresh and vividly alive.
These young gentlemen are creating sounds of true substance!
You could plunge in anywhere really and be lifted up by the pure
energy and enthusiasm of their committed performances.
Let me tell you about a few of these wonderful compositions.
'Camera Talk' manages to combine a viscerally raw rhythm,
under-produced and untainted in the best possible way, with
an intoxicating melody and delicious vocal harmonies.
The high-flying violin lifts the energy straight through the roof.
The spirit of CSN&Y lives on in 'Cards and Quarters'.
Mr Frazier's drums hold down a strong but simple beat
around which the song unfolds in evermore complex layers.
The last chiming chord hangs in the air like the aftertaste
of a half-remembered dream.
There is a dream-like quality running through much of this album.
'Airplanes' is unquestionably one of the project's finest compositions.
Good-humoured and uplifting in equal measure, I found myself completely
(and willingly) swept away by the ensemble's prodigious musicality.
'Sun Hands' has so much passion it is at risk of spontaneously combusting
and 'World News' is chock-full of a jolly kind of goodness rarely captured
by any band in any time you might care to imagine. Joyful, rapturous stuff!
I'll shut up now !
It's good. It's very, very good ! It's the kind of music to make all of our
lives just a little bit richer and more bearable.
(Oh Heck! Sorry I just can't help it.....'Shape Shifter' made just about
every hair on my body - from nose to tail - stand to attention!)
I stumbled upon this truly inspiring little band entirely by accident.
Trust me on this one - it's glorious stuff !
Essential.
You're going to love it too. Promise.
As incandescent a bunch of songs as I've heard this year and
there are a whole healthy dozen of them to be getting on with.
Local Natives hail from Silverlake, California, U.S.A.
They are Taylor Rice (guitar/vocals), Kelcey Ayer (keyboards/vocals),
Ryan Hahn (guitar/vocals), Andy Hamm (bass) and Matt Frazier (drums)
and together they make a distinctive and beautiful sound.
This is tricky stuff to pin-down so I'll leave it for someone more
gifted in the realms of genre sub-divisions to fix this for us later.
What I found here transcends genre in so many ways.
It is BIG music. Heart-warming music. Enveloping and uplifting music.
The melodies are complex and absorbing; the singing fresh and vividly alive.
These young gentlemen are creating sounds of true substance!
You could plunge in anywhere really and be lifted up by the pure
energy and enthusiasm of their committed performances.
Let me tell you about a few of these wonderful compositions.
'Camera Talk' manages to combine a viscerally raw rhythm,
under-produced and untainted in the best possible way, with
an intoxicating melody and delicious vocal harmonies.
The high-flying violin lifts the energy straight through the roof.
The spirit of CSN&Y lives on in 'Cards and Quarters'.
Mr Frazier's drums hold down a strong but simple beat
around which the song unfolds in evermore complex layers.
The last chiming chord hangs in the air like the aftertaste
of a half-remembered dream.
There is a dream-like quality running through much of this album.
'Airplanes' is unquestionably one of the project's finest compositions.
Good-humoured and uplifting in equal measure, I found myself completely
(and willingly) swept away by the ensemble's prodigious musicality.
'Sun Hands' has so much passion it is at risk of spontaneously combusting
and 'World News' is chock-full of a jolly kind of goodness rarely captured
by any band in any time you might care to imagine. Joyful, rapturous stuff!
I'll shut up now !
It's good. It's very, very good ! It's the kind of music to make all of our
lives just a little bit richer and more bearable.
(Oh Heck! Sorry I just can't help it.....'Shape Shifter' made just about
every hair on my body - from nose to tail - stand to attention!)
I stumbled upon this truly inspiring little band entirely by accident.
Trust me on this one - it's glorious stuff !
Essential.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
best album 2010
For me this was by a whisker the best album of 2010. Mr Wolf as usual sums it up... GLORIOUS
Published 10 months ago by Mr. Paul Johnston
a bit sub fleet foxes
but very strong songs and arrangements - they do some danged strange things with drums some times.... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Jon A. Crowcroft
Comparison to Fleet Foxes?
Bought this on the strength of a couple of sites saying they have a similarity to The Fleet Foxes, so though I'd take a chance. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Blackarrow
such a good cd
Saw them life in brighton, and they are soo much better live than what their cd produced, but its still amazing. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Lynne
This is music
I love this album. I guess they'll be criminally overlooked but I suppose that has its advantages. From start to finish, it's all killer stuff. Read more
Published 18 months ago by The_Man_The_Myth
Dull and Disappointing
I had never heard of the Local Natives until recently, when I watched a Youtube video of them doing a fantastic cover of Simon & Garfunkel's 'Cecelia'. Read more
Published 21 months ago by C. P. Whiting
Love this and they are even better live!!!
I was going to there gig at Shepard's Bush Empire so wanted to get a little more familiar with there songs. I love this album and they were even better live!!! Read more
Published 23 months ago by emskil
Gorillla Manor (4.5 / 5)
I only discovered this band for myself a month ago when I was planning my Glastonbury Festival timetable and saw that they were playing at the Queen's Head on the Thursday night. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Paul
Bloody Brilliant!
This album just gets better and better with every listen and its not often these days you put an album on for the first time and it gets you. Read more
Published on 24 May 2010 by mega munch
splendid!!
This album has stayed in my cd player and has been constantly on my mp3 player since its arrival. Sounds like a more uplifting/summery Grizzly Bear. Read more
Published on 11 May 2010 by Simon D. Woods
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