An eclectic combination of driving beats and delicate harmonies, Local Native’s album Gorilla Manor has been in high rotation since it’s release last month. We spoke to the band about playing gigs worldwide and crafting a unique, debut album.
How is your tour going? What’s it like playing at big festivals like SXSW?
We’re just finishing up our UK tour, which is actually our first headlining tour, so we’re pretty excited. When we get back to the states, we’ll be going back to SXSW, which was a great experience for us last year. The Chapel performance we did there ended up being one of our favorite shows that we’ve ever done.
How did you guys end up playing music together, and how long have you been together as a band?
We’ve been around as Local Natives for a little under two years now, although we experimented with different sounds for three years and pretty much existed [then] in high school band form. About two years ago we started writing the songs that ended up on Gorilla Manor and began to getting serious about being a band.
Much of your music is characterized by beautifully layered vocal harmonies—are any of you classically trained? And, how does the vocal element play a part in your music?
No, none of us are, but thanks! Everyone sings along together during practice and we do a lot of trial and error, just figuring it out as we go along. When we first got together as Local Natives we decided to go for more of a vocals emphasis, and I think that’s been an important part of our sound so far.
Aside from the obvious Talking Heads influence (one of the songs on Gorilla Manor is a cover of “Warning Sign”), what other bands have contributed to and inspired your music?
Anybody can come to the table with any style of song, the range of styles and artists we pull inspiration from is so broad. We’re big Talking Heads fans though, obviously.
Gorilla Manor explores a diverse array of sounds and styles, from afro-beat rhythms to barbershop trio harmonies — do you feel you have crafted a signature sound out of these unusual elements?
Some of the songs on Gorilla Manor are pretty old, but others are [only] a few months old. There isn’t really one track that’s the “Local Natives sound” — all the music came from a time period where we wrote a bunch of songs and chose the twelve we felt most confident about. We’re still looking for exactly what our sound is, and experimenting with new things.
How do you approach songwriting? Do different people contribute different elements to a song, or is it a very collaborative process?
For lyrics, it usually comes a bit more from one person because it’s very personal — it loses that touch if you have another person who’s trying to put down words from an experience they never had. Other than that, everyone contributes to the music and we create the instrumentation and composition together.
I know you guys are from Los Angeles, which is known to have a pretty dynamic, yet also competitive music scene — what’s your experience been with the LA music scene? Do you think of yourselves as an LA band?
We recorded Gorilla Manor in Orange County, so we’ve only been in LA for about a year. Surprisingly, we’ve had a really warm reception from LA, everyone’s been supportive and we have great turnout for shows. I think we all consider LA home, but we’re still getting our toes wet since we’ve been on tour a lot.
