LOCAL NATIVES - Hummingbird

Being young means being impulsive, emotional, irrational… Local Natives, even on this record cut and tailored by "tailor" Aaron Dessner, are keen to make this clear to the listener: "what we're doing is as current and fashionable as anything out there in contemporary music".

Blasts of overwrought pathos, somewhere between Perfume Genius and Arcade Fire ("Mt. Washington"), scrambling up post-emotional ridges with an Nme kind of vibe (Wild Beasts, Zulu Winter), vocal and organ propulsion in the style of LeGrand, elusive compositions that vent all their possible inspiration into an easy emotionality (unlike what Grizzly Bear still manage to pull off).

Here they're helped by the touch of Dessner – met on tour supporting The National – who gives "Hummingbird" an understated elegance that the rougher "Gorilla Manor" definitely lacked, making this second effort at least pleasant ("Black Balloons"), even if it lacks songs of any particular originality – by now it's clear that originality isn't exactly a value Local Natives hold dear.

Afro-pop doesn't seem to be so fashionable anymore. What follows, then, is a series of tedious post-psychedelic crescendo pieces, a pile-up of percussion, choral vocals, guitar arpeggios and accommodating distortion that, over time, reveal their two-dimensional nature.

There's also a hint of psychedelic folk in "Ceilings", rounding out a highly digestible product, ready to adapt itself to whatever it assumes is the average listener's taste. The illusion of standing out reigns and seeps through all of this "Hummingbird", but it's just the latest, peripheral outlet of a chain store.

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22/01/2013