Best of What's Next: Local Natives

Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern

Hometown: Los Angeles
Album: Gorilla Manor
Band Members: Kelcey Ayer (vocals, keyboard), Matt Frazier (drums), Ryan Hahn (vocals, guitar), Andy Hamm (bass), Taylor Rice (vocals, guitar)
For Fans Of: Andrew Bird, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend

The band now known as Local Natives formed in Orange County, Calif. three years ago. The quintet has since relocated a few dozen miles north to Los Angeles, and its debut LP, Gorilla Manor (out in February) is named after the old house they shared in Silver Lake, but they haven’t yet built a reputation suited to their name—they keep getting yanked across the pond.

Local Natives’ rich, CSNY-spun harmonies, churning folk-guitar lines and ebullient percussion first stirred the overseas press at last year’s SXSW conference. This January, the guys found themselves devouring lamb burgers and guzzling hard cider in London during their third European visit in less than a year, still ecstatic about playing for more than 4,000 fans at the Brixton Academy in December, their biggest show to date. Success abroad is sweet, says guitarist and sometime lead singer Taylor Rice, though he admits it’s frustrating that he can’t pronounce the name of the French TV show—Ce Soir ou Jamais, translated as Tonight or Never—on which the band just gave yet another characteristically full-bodied performance. “What we need to do in the van,” he says, “is listen to Rosetta Stone between every single show and try to learn all of the languages.”

The taut song structures of Gorilla Manor, arising from self-inflicted jeers and slathered in the colorful muck of a fresh food fight, are the work of bandmates that spend 99 percent of their waking lives together. They’ll bond on a stateside tour  this spring (“Playing the U.S. is very important to us,” Rice notes), but compared to the day-devouring drives which will propel the band around the U.S., the two-hour van rides between European cities are heavenly. “Every musician’s dream is to get to tour with your band all over the world,” Rice adds. “We’re lucky enough that it’s happening right now.”