LOCAL NATIVES - Sunlit Youth

A little over a decade since forming, California's Local Natives return with their third studio album. The band, originally from Silver Lake and formed at an Orange County high school, have carried forward since their debut "Gorilla Manor" an indie-rock sound still uncertain of its direction, but never short on a kind of innocent, youthful cockiness. While the 2009 debut earned plenty of praise for its alt-pop leanings toward the latest wave of indie-folk (Mumford And Sons and Vampire Weekend above all), the 2013 follow-up "Hummingbird" shifted the influences toward Arcade Fire; even though the need to stay current cost the songwriting some originality, every track carried real emotional weight and melodic hooks.

The third record from Kelcey Ayer, Ryan Hahn and Taylor Rice (the band's true masterminds), titled "Sunlit Youth", hits shelves on September 9: the result is a very different sound, but at the same time a less original one.

The opening track immediately throws the listener into the band's new sonic blend; "Villainy" starts with a melodic, electro-chic sampling of drum machine and synths that greets anyone listening with a first line that sums up its intentions: "I wanna start again". The following "Past Lives" confirms the Silver Lake band's new direction: an atmospheric electronic sound and Taylor Rice's light voice gradually building, until the whole track turns into something that could easily be an Arcade Fire song. Next comes "Fountain Of Youth", certainly the most successful melodically, instantly recognizable and also closer to the sound of previous albums (though in certain passages it recalls the Killers of "Day And Age"). "Masters" starts off really well, with a crossover between electronics and guitars, voice and chorus trading off nervously before taking flight into a chorus of voices loaded with effects and tones we've already heard. "Jellyfish" wants to be the outlier track, just digital beats and voices building a warm, intimate atmosphere; a risky gamble toward more minimalist territory that, incidentally, pays off. "Coins" could pass for a "Gorilla Manor" track with more electronics, while "MotherEmanuel" wins points for its riff but overdoes the choruses, which start to feel like too much by this point in the first half of the record.

The acoustic ballad "Ellie Alice" stands out more for its lyrics than for its sound (decidedly flat); while the building percussion of "Psycho Lovers", alternating with ethereal vocals and electronic textures, doesn't lift "Sunlit Youth" out of the comparison with Arcade Fire, who were already working this territory more than ten years ago. The album closes on the cosmic atmospheres of "Sea Of Years": slow beats, a distinctive, poetically intended lyric, but one that doesn't land a memorable closing line.

The album is pleasant enough taken as a whole, even if it fades from memory quickly, leaving no trace. What's interesting, though, is the distribution channel chosen to promote the record: "Sunlit Youth" is almost entirely streamable via Tumblr, complete with lyrics and band photos; a shrewd marketing move, given that on that platform Local Natives find an audience that fits their genre perfectly well.

The California band wanted to take a step toward innovation. The afro-pop and classic folk-rock of old are now far behind them, replaced by attempts to attract a different - and bigger - audience than the one that made their name back in 2009, through synthetic rhythms and dreamy choruses. But Local Natives give themselves away with their obsession with chasing trends and staying young (just look at the lyrics of "Fountain Of Youth" to see it), and they remain tied to sounds we've already heard before. To explain such a blunt verdict, we might briefly recall a famous Rimbaud aphorism: "One must be absolutely modern": Local Natives probably take that motto a little too literally, forgetting that being modern means reacting against the past, not quietly conforming to the present.

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16/09/2016