Local Natives Forge New Ground

A ‘companion piece’ new release and short film solidify their unique bond

by Jeff McCord

Local Natives in Studio 1A w/ host Jody Denberg

Full Session

Give LA’s Local Natives credit. They’re certainly not afraid to tread new ground. Hot on the heels of their July 2023 release, Time Waits For No One, they released But I’ll Wait For You this past April, describing the ‘companion piece’ as follows: “Maybe not an answer to a question but an exhale to an inhale.” 

Now the five piece have returned to Austin for a session in Studio 1A and a screening of their new short film of the same name. “We wanted to give insight into what it feels like to be trapped inside the vortex of trying to make a record with your bandmates,” the band posted on Instagram. Among the PR of the new release is this statement: “There is so little that’s in our control but among all this chaos, we can choose to be there for each other.”

Local Natives in Studio 1A

It’s a theme they return to time and again. When we last caught up to the band around the time of their 2023 release, this was very much on their minds: What happens when your band, who have been your family for over a decade, start competing with, um, real families?

In August of 2021, the band played their biggest hometown show ever at LA’s famed Greek Theater. It was an emotional time. Friends since they were teenagers, in a band that has seen only one lineup change in eighteen years, they’ve been a remarkably cohesive unit. Together much of the past decade, they were suddenly forging their own paths. Pulled apart, not only by the pandemic but by life. All of it. The good (marriages), the bad (miscarriages). Heavy stuff. So they came together for their first show in quite some time almost as strangers. Did they still make sense to each other anymore?

The show was a triumph, but even riding that high, the future still felt uncertain. 

We’d been a band for so many years.” 

That’s guitarist and vocalist Ryan Hahn talking. He and bassist/vocalist  Nik Ewing (who joined the band in 2011 – “The new guy,” jokes Ryan) are talking to me over Zoom, enjoying a rare and sunny day off in New York’s Central Park.

“I’ve known Taylor [Rice, guitars and vocals] since I was 13,” Ryan continues, “and it was the longest we’d been apart in so many years because we hadn’t been touring or making records. It just felt like we were living and breathing, being in this band together. We even lived together for a couple of years. It was just a strange time of everyone being apart, leading our own lives. A lot of it was getting back in the studio. Do we still know how to do this? How do we make music in the same room? A lot of the record you’re hearing us kind of finding our way back. We made so much music during this time. It was a slow start, but by the end, we were cranking out songs. So it was an interesting experience.” 

One that almost didn’t happen. The slow start was frustrating. The Greek show showed they could still make music together, but creating a new album was another matter. 

Local Natives rediscovers the flow

Nik recalls the show’s afterparty. 

We definitely thought there was a chance that it was our last show. Ryan, I remember talking to you, and right after the show, friends and family were there, it was a big celebratory night. It sold out. We hadn’t played a show in a long time, and I remember thinking, ‘Was that it?’ We didn’t really know. We were fracturing a lot. There’s was distance between us. We care so much about each other as brothers and as people. There was a reality where we could have just easily continued as a band and liked each other less, as coworkers or something like that. That’s a reality that could happen.”

MICHELLE SHIERS Local Natives at LA’s Greek Theatre, August 16, 2021

We know lots of bands like that,” says Ryan, laughing. “We’re just like, ‘Wow, how do you guys do it?’” 

After the Greek show, there were lots of discussions among the five of them. And in the end, two things became clear. They probably all needed the long break. But they all needed Local Natives, too. So they got back to work. 

I do think it was a nice reminder of the connections that we have with each other.” Ryans says, “That sound we make that’s unique to us, that only the five of us together can do. And that connection with the people that came to the show, it was just a really nice reminder and it gave us a little momentum going into the studio.”

That unique sound was fully formed by the time of their 2009 debut Gorilla Manor, an almost baroque, thickly arranged soup swarming with strange beats and ethereal backing vocals. 

“We were singing a lot of harmonies,” Ryan recalls. “We loved the Beach Boys, Crosby, Stills and Nash, but none of us had any theory background. So I think it kind of came off more punk rock, less polished. Then we were drawn to some ornate orchestral stuff. So it kind of all gets thrown in the hopper.”

For a band with three primary singers and songwriters, their work is a process. 

“It’s definitely more democratic than any band that I’ve talked to,” Ryan admits. “A lot of times it’s myself, Taylor and Kelcey [Ayer, keyboards and vocals] bringing a song in various states of development to the band. What do you think of this? Nik’s our studio wizard, he can take the simplest little idea and expand upon it.”

“We’re pretty undefined in our roles once we get in the studio,” Nik continues. Ryan will write a drum beat and Kelcey will write a bass line, and I’ll write a piano melody. We’re just, the five of us, trying to figure out this song together in real time. We all have different ideas of what that song should be. From my point of view, I can look back and hear that, and see our tension in a good way. It’s not a song that just the one of us could make.”

It’s also a bit messy, which explains the band’s slim output of just five albums in fourteen years, and their slow start on Time Waits For No One. When I comment that it seems like they don’t work very fast, they both break out laughing. 

“You’re right,” says Nik. “Because we all have an opinion.”

Produced by John Congleton (who has worked with Spoon and St. Vincent), the recording of the new album took place over seven different studios around the LA area. Kind of a lot.

“If we were some huge band,” Ryan says, “If this was the eighties or something, we probably would have stayed in one [studio] and made the most expensive record of all time. But I think logistically it made sense to hop around. Different studios suit different things. And it’s not every time you need some historic big room to get a big drum or live band sound. Sometimes you’re just cutting vocals in a little closet. It kind of kept it fresh and fun for us. I do think now we can hear it, different parts on the record. Different songs have like little different flavors and experiences.”

“It seems like the [songs] that resonate, that get the whole band, Nik and everyone excited are the ones that feel the most honest and vulnerable,” Ryan explains. “This record was maybe our way of dealing with a lot of that head-on and just kind of deal with it in the music. A lot of it was like striving for connection in the face of a lot of this hardship.”

After all the uncertainty, it’s not hard to see the palpable relief they feel being back in the surroundings of what was, for all of them, their first family.

And now the ‘family’ has followed up with a companion release and their first venture into film. 

Trailer for Local Natives’ But I’ll Wait For You

Ryan sums it up.

“We were stepping off the carousel of everything we’d been doing for so long. And in a lot of ways it made us reconsider how we went about things and even how we made songs together. A lot of times there’s a bunch of cooks in the kitchen. And I think that requires taking care of not only our music skills but also our relationships as friends, you know? I’d still like to think we’re friends first and foremost. It was a lot of re-learning what we knew Local Natives to be, and what our strengths were. But also letting go of that and figuring out what new things could happen, new sounds, new ways of writing. Just trying to lessen the grip and roll with things more.”

FOLLOW LOCAL NATIVES


Musicians: Taylor Rice – vocals, guitar; Kelcey Ayer – vocals, piano, Ryan Hahn – guitar, bgv; Matthew Frazier – drums; Nik Ewing – bass

Credits:

Producer: Deidre Gott; Edit: Renee Dominguez; Audio Mix: Jake Perlman; Audio Engineer: Jake Perlman, Rene Chavez; Cameras: Renee Dominguez, Ryan Olszewski; Host: Jody Denberg

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