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Local Natives Monkey Around

LA's Local Natives have been on the road with their album Gorilla Manor, named after their former abode, for an unnaturally long time. So when Q was invited to meet guitarist Taylor Rice and bass player Andy Hamm for some revitalising crudités and humus, we weren't expecting the sort of hyperactive behaviour suggested by that ape-ish title. Meet the band who spend their days browsing blogs and writing music "democratically". That is, of course, when they're not touring barns in Iowa...

Q: Hi Local Natives, how are you?
Taylor Rice: Good. I think we're on the start of our eighth week of tour now. It's definitely sinking in. We're starting to feel the wear a little bit... which may or may not have something do with our really late one in London the other night.

Q: What was going on in London?
TR: There's a super small place... the Underground London Bar? We've been there a couple of times and it was an open bar. [Laughs] Way too much fun.

Q: Are you still recovering?
TR: [Sheepish] A little bit. You know how it goes - the sickness makes its rounds. It hit a bunch of the guys pretty bad this winter. Now it's on the up and up. It's gonna be kicked.

Q: Is this the heftiest tour schedule you've had yet?
TR: Oh yeah! The Local Natives world record tour, so far.

Q: Last time you were here on an NME tour. How does that compare with going it alone?
TR: NME was good. We connected with Golden Silvers who were headlining that tour. And it's insane for us to be coming back around now. When we first heard we were doing our headlining tour of Europe we felt daunted and nervous. Surprisingly the support from people everywhere has been pretty overwhelming. We're happy and thrilled.

Q: Gorilla Manor is named after the house that you shared when you made the album. Do you still live there together?
TR: We don't. We'd been playing for a while as a group but the band had always been something on the side. We moved into a house together in Orange County and Ryan (Hahn, guitar) just nicknamed it that one day. Looking back it was a transformative time when things came together for us. We coalesced our sound, made our album and named it after that as homage to the experience. Right before tour, Andy and I moved out to live in a van together.

Q: Is it nice to have a bit of separate space, albeit in a van?
TR: Yeah, just because our schedule's been so intense. But our style as a band is super collaborative and we realised that living together. So in the future when we write album number two we'll consider getting a place together again. The fact that we can grab anyone at any moment is really important to our writing process.

Q: You're all singers and songwriters so how is writing organised? Is it a free reign democracy?
TR: Yeah, that's exactly it. We try to consciously not have a lot of rules, so it's song by song basis. One time Andy just had a chord progression and an idea for a violin string line. We built off that and wrote Stranger Things. Airplanes was one Kelcey (Ayer, keyboards) busted out himself. Of course, we added to it but he brought that to the table.

Q: Airplanes is the new single. What is it about?
TR: It's actually about Kelcey's grandfather. He died when Kelcey was two years old, so he only knew him through stories that his father told. It's funny cos people think it's a romantic song about a girl. [Chuckles] It's about his grandfather.

Q: You've been described as Vampire Weekend meets Fleet Foxes meets Arcade Fire. Do you enjoy being branded as one of America's "buzz" bands?
Andy Hamm: It's not something we planned on. We're just trying to keep touring and playing our music in the hope that people take time to listen and make up their mind. What's important is that people give it a shot.
TR: It's ironic cos we wrote most of this album a long time ago. When we first lived in the house we hadn't heard of some of the bands we're getting compared to!

Q: Are there contemporary bands who have influenced you?
AH: We definitely take a lot from pop culture bands. We love Grizzly Bear and Broken Social Scene. As far as influences go it's a pretty eclectic bunch, which I think you can hear in the music. We are five different writers with five different tastes. Somebody asked us for our top ten bands as a group and it turned into this big discussion. It's hard to find ten that everyone agrees on.

Q: How did you decide on your Talking Heads cover then unanimously?
AH: We wanted to do a cover and were poking our heads around. I was diving into a Talking Heads boxset. The more I read, the more I knew this was the band. I thought we could do our own spin on Warning Sign out of respect for the original. Otherwise we'd just be a band that did a Talking Heads song.

Q: You have video footage of you performing in various public places on your website. One of them looks like it's in a barn...
TR: In the rafters of a barn. We like doing acoustic videos cos we're vocally based. We just filmed one for Blogotheque - from France. We're huge fans. They film interesting stuff that inspires us. The videos strike randomly. That was from when we were touring barns with this awesome blog Daytrotter. [Laughing] Andy said, Let's play in the rafters! So we did it spur of the moment.

Q: What does touring barns involve?
TR: We played five cool barns in Iowa. That one was huge, octagonal and 120 years old. It was incredible.

Q: Blogs have become increasingly important to many bands, including you.
TR: Oh yeah, absolutely. They're really vital for us. It's taken us a long time because we like to do everything ourselves. We e-mailed blogs that we liked saying, Check out our music. That support is hugely important cos it's peer-to-peer level. The blogs are people that we relate to and they were the early champions of us.

Q: Last year South By Southwest was where you started to get tongues waggling. Are you looking forward to your return?
TR: Yeah, it was insane. We played nine shows in four days. This time we're playing nine shows in three days [nervously laughs]. It's crazy. I'm excited to get to the sun.

Q: How do you do nine shows in three days?
TR: You just don't talk between shows! We're playing three a day. The good thing is we've been touring this entire year since then so we'll be a lot more equipped.

Q: What lies ahead for Local Natives?
TR: We're booked out! We do South By Southwest, then Coachella will be the beginning of our US tour. We're planning on doing festivals all summer in the UK and Europe. We've talked about that for a long time as our goal strategically. The festival culture out here is an incredible tribute to music.

Q: Are there any bands you're looking forward to see?
TR: We're looking forward to Broken Social Scene at South By Southwest. I love them. We're big Spoon fans. And Bear In Heaven from Brooklyn. We've recently made their acquaintance online.
AH: In Europe it's still up in the air. So I don't want to look at the line-up and be like, Oh my god, we might meet them! At the beginning of the tour Jose Gonzalez came up and shook our hand. At this level that's just weird. We'll take it all as it comes.

Local Natives are touring the US and will be back in the UK and Europe this summer. Their album Gorilla Manor is out now.

Words: Eve Barlow (Eve's personal music blog can be found here)

5:32 PM | 09/04/2010