Local Natives, Gorilla Manor.

Posted on 27th Feb 10 by Ciara O Brien | 0

Gorilla Manor is the début album from Silver Lake five-piece Local Natives. The album saw its U.K release on the 2^nd of November 2009, and its U.S release on the 16^th of February 2010. Backed by a significant amount of blogosphere hype, this first album has a lot to live up to, and thankfully it has managed to deliver.

The confused-face inducing album title is in fact an homage to the building in New England in which they recorded the majority of the album, and strangely enough the title suits it. As a whole it is both wild and polished, a mish-mash of contradictions which somehow link together to create balance and a perfectly acceptable and refreshingly new indie-orchestral sound.

Gorilla Manor is incredibly well-rounded for a first full offering. The first track Wide Eyes opens the album on an optimistic note and sets the tone for what will follow. Guitarist Ryan Hahn himself said of the track “It’s about people’s obsession with the miraculous and disastrous…with witnessing extraordinary events.” And the listener can’t help but feel that we ourselves are witnessing the birth of something extraordinary as the album builds in pace. Wide Eyes is a big, anthemic track which raises the bar for the rest of the tracks.

The second track Airplane shows a deep understanding of musical structure. It opens with the jarring sounds of the group yawning and groaning. This track is almost the epitome of the album as a whole. It encompasses the growing energy that will come as the album progresses, so it is almost apt that the opening of it acts symbolically as the post-hibernation awakening of the group into the summer of the album. Like this track, the entire album is peppered with enveloping and uplifting tracks with complicated melodies which are all instantly memorable.

Other major high points in the album are tracks such as Sun Hands which is hauntingly akin to Straylight Run with its chant-inducing chorus, Camera Talk which, vocally, is eerily Rufus Wainwright-esque and is addictively catchy. It combines simple subject matter and complex melodies and creating the perfect summer road-trip anthem.

The second half of the album does slow down a bit, but appropriately so. Rather than a jarring intervention of calm, the album follows its natural progression and slows and matures just enough to remain catchy without becoming boring. The album is somewhat structured like the seasons, giving us hot and cold, energy and calm. It leaves us, in the end slowly emerging from the calm lament of Who Knows Who Cares, squinting and confused into the rebirth that is Sticky Thread, and there it leaves us.

As a whole, Gorilla Manor is intelligent and well-structured, bubbling over with a cheery effervescence which is little seen in the desensitized media world at the moment. It is an album which takes pride in its vocals and refuses to let them be overshadowed. The perfect structure of each song is indicative of the group’s pedantic mode of composition, having spent just as long on arranging the vocal harmonies of the tracks as on the rest of the process.

Local Natives are an astounding find who are destined to only mature further and grow into their sound. Luckily enough the group will be gracing our little island with their tour in March so be sure to follow the links below to get more information on the tour and album, you won’t regret it.

Drop-D Rating: 8.5/10.

http://www.myspace.com/localnatives

http://www.thelocalnatives.com/home.html

Tags: Gorilla Manor, Local Natives, Rufus Wainwright, Straylight Run