LOCAL NATIVES - Gorilla Manor

Some albums surprise by how skillfully they present themselves, managing to mislead entire crowds of listeners. At the same time, a closer look allows one to tear away the veil carefully laid over something that comes remarkably close to cosmic nothingness, to a pneumatic void. With this premise we must introduce the debut of Local Natives, a group of Orange County residents who moved into an apartment together to live out a kind of musical idyll.

The Californian band certainly knows how to put on a show, starting with this backstory ready-made for interviews. They arrive and unfurl their whole alternative arsenal, scattered here and there like an artfully disordered still life. The problem is that this jumble of ingredients is never allowed to fully cook: what you end up with is a stunted, misshapen Tower of Babel.

First of all, there's the ethno-world-tribal-jungle imagery at play, sketching out an afro-beat that recalls Vampire Weekend and Dodos. Then there's the frequent recourse to choral singing: rather than acting as a way to "rein in" and give breathing room to the singer's exuberant vocal skill (as it does for Fleet Foxes), here it becomes a tool to prop up a performance that is anything but mature. At the same time, it remains an almost "obligatory" choice for anyone wanting to follow the current trend and present themselves as a collective of cute, naive, fashionable young men: everything gets flattened into those steroid-pumped crescendos that Mumford And Sons had already made their trademark ("World News", "Shape Shifter").

So what's left to throw into the pile? A few dirty, nasty riff monsters, somewhere between early Islands and certain Late Of The Pier moments ("Wide Eyes", "Sun Hands"), a violin, just to show they too have a folkish, committed, emotional side ("Stranger Things"). There's even a guitar straight out of Pearl Jam's "Binaural" ("Camera Talk")...

There's a lack of variety in the songwriting, a lack of melodic taste (often poorly masked by the dynamics of the tracks, which are always a touch clumsy): there's really very little that could set a drifting record back on course. At the same time, they do manage to put forward a few nice, well-mannered melodic ideas ("Airplanes" above all). A fleeting infatuation, a momentary thrill, perhaps - that's all they'll manage to spark. "Gorilla Manor" remains, nonetheless, a record running out of breath, when the sole purpose of this release seems to be riding the long wave of far more deserving bands. Even in this more prosaic aim, Local Natives seem destined for a short life.

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28/11/2009