Three years after its first effort, the Los Angeles-based group has dropped its much anticipated second album, Hummingbird, which is about as accomplished a sophomore effort as a band can make. Still staying true to the elements that made its debut such a success, but with enough progression in its production and songwriting to keep the band from sounding static, Hummingbird is a sonically engaging, confident and utterly masterful work from a band with even more promising days ahead.
When Local Natives burst onto the scene in 2010 with debut Gorilla Manor, the group seemed, for many, like the perfect indie rock band. Thoughtful, harmony-laden, organic-sounding rock music with enough hookery to draw you in and enough technical proficiency to keep you interested. They were the type of guys who’d namedrop NPR in a song and make you love them all the more for it.
It proved to be a winning formula. Gorilla Manor was almost universally praised by critics, and the Natives garnered a devoted and diverse fanbase, selling out shows on multiple continents and even landing an opening slot for indie deities Arcade Fire, who had just taken home Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammys.
The Local Natives’ debut album began with a track called “Wide Eyes,” which had an expansiveness befitting the song’s exploratory lyrical themes. “Oh to see with my own eyes,” lead singer Taylor Rice cried out over a spastic drum track, expressing a youthful desire to see the world, but a slight nervousness about what might lie out there.
On Hummingbird, the Local Natives sound like they’ve had some of their questions answered, and are a bit troubled by what they’ve discovered. Where Gorilla Manor was built around the soaring lead single “Airplanes,” the hookiest track on here is the mournful “Heavy Feet,” and the distinction couldn’t be more appropriate—Hummingbird is a more mature, heavier record.
The immediate benefit of this newfound maturity lies in the record’s production values, which is (generally) expected with a sophomore record but still absolutely worthy of admiration. Aesthetically, this album is utterly lush, with delicate keyboard work and atmospheric synths that generally serve as the background to the punchier vocals and propulsive percussion tracks that drive these songs.
The Grizzly Bear-esque “Wooly Mammoth” is probably the best example of the intricate mix Local Natives have found here. A busy (but groovy) drum track gives the start of the song a definable crack, while some eloquently constructed guitar parts eventually give way to a towering hook that you’ll undoubtedly want to return to.
Where the Local Natives truly earn the listener’s respect, however, is in its skill at making sad songs without being dreary or plodding. For example, on third track “Ceilings,” Rice recommends brightly to “Hold the summer in your hands / Until the summer turns to sand,” simultaneously acknowledging the inevitability of time’s passage while praising the memory of that which has passed. It’s a lyric that represents the Natives’ keen ability to walk the line between melancholic and melodramatic, and craft music that is thoroughly bittersweet but almost always light on its feet. Only on “Three Months,” the record’s singular low point, does the group indulge a bit too much in misery, with a lugubrious, repetitive vocal line that makes Rice’s tenor voice sound piercing and unattractive for the first and only time.
Aside from that mid-point misfire, however, Hummingbird is a truly fantastic follow-up, with enough hooks (“Breakers,” “Heavy Feet,” “Wooly Mammoth”) to break up the slower, sadder tracks that carry the bulk of this record’s weight. It’s an album filled with an admirable amount of magnificent sonic textures, thoughtful moments of restraint and unflinching technical expertise.
The songwriting is sharper than ever, and the tracks sound warm and inviting even as they touch on colder, darker themes. There is ever so much beauty to behold here, and in spite of the record’s markedly moodier focus, by the time the majestic closer “Bowery” fades to nothing, the only thing you’ll feel is a profound sense of satisfaction.
In that way, the album’s title seems much less ironic and self-referential, and far more revealing of its underlying truth—that we are all tiny creatures fluttering around in a much larger world, and as frightening and heartbreaking this life may be, there are some truly beautiful things that make it worth living. This album is one of them.
