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Local Natives’ Fresh Start

Local Natives’ Fresh Start

  • Everything has changed for the indie band, but they're figuring it out.
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These days, Local Natives is all about switching things up.

For the first 15 years of the band’s existence, Local Natives had a pretty set routine: make an album, tour the album, repeat.

“We used to live in a house together and we toured basically 11 months of the year,” guitarist Ryan Hahn said. “We were just living and breathing the band.”

But these days? “Truthfully we really don’t spend much time together,” Hahn admitted.

There’s a few reasons for the change. One is that Hahn and bandmates Taylor Rice, Nik Ewing and Matt Frazier have all started families. Another is their priorities have shifted.

“I know it’s pretty cliche, but when you become a parent for the first time, there’s a very distinct before and after,” Ewing said. “Now in my life, it really is like the colors are more vivid than they ever were before. It’s just given me a brand new perspective.”

But more than that, it’s because the band went through a pandemic-induced separation that caused the guys to do a hard reset. When they came back together after nearly a year apart, things had shifted tremendously.

“We’d all changed in that time apart,” Hahn said. “We’d all gone through some major life changes and loss, some of us became parents for the first time, and when we came back together we had to ask ourselves what we wanted the band to be.

“Honestly, there was a lot of heaviness at first,” Hahn admitted. “There was this tension there that we hadn’t experienced before, and we had a lot to work out before we could fully come back together. The highs and lows we were feeling at the same time were so extreme. As individuals and as a band, we were on the verge of collapse.”

LETTING GO

It took a while for Local Natives to work through their issues, and in the meantime, the guys did what they do best: make new music. The result is captured on the band’s double album — 2023’s Time Will Wait For No One and 2024’s But I Will Wait For You.

“In a lot of ways, this era has been a process of letting go,” Rice said. “Letting go of what we thought life was going to be like, of where the musical muse would take us, letting go of former selves to make room for who we are now.”

On each album, the band curated a collection of songs that wrestled with the inner turmoil they were feeling. The band was honest that tensions were high, and the process took longer than any other record before.

“Obviously, for every album, we want to push ourselves to try something new,” Hahn said. “But we knew that before we can even think about that, we also have to figure out how to come back together. And there was still a lot of heaviness we had to work through in our personal lives and as a band.”

Who are we as a band now? Where do we want to go? What do our fans want from us? What do we want from this? Those are just some of the questions the band wrestled with.

After writing nearly a dozen songs about frustrations they had, they realized they didn’t want this chapter to end there. So they kept writing in order to find joy, excitement and hope again, even if they weren’t sure where it was going to come from.

“That time felt almost like a liminal space, which can be a strange place to be because it can be scary and exhilarating at the same time,” Hahn explained. “But I think a lot of the records speak to that feeling of knowing you’re about to go somewhere new, somewhere you can’t fully understand.”

Take “Alpharetta,” for example, which is the opening track on But I Will Wait For You. In the song, Rice sings, “Neither of us know the way / But either way, we’re going.”

It perfectly captures the liminal feeling the band went through.

“For a while, the energy in the band felt tenuous and we were having to figure out how to reconnect on so many different things,” Hahn said. “And, ‘Alpharetta,’ for me, is all about that feeling like you’re in between an old life and a new life, you’re on this threshold.”

That tension, while hard to navigate, ultimately brought the guys closer together and shifted them to a new chapter in their lives and careers.

“We had never done anything like this,” Ewing said. “But I feel like the way this happened is the way it should have, and it’s beautiful to see how this huge body of work slowly came together.”

MOVING ON

Hahn sees both albums as a perfect snapshot of what the band went through. And despite the mess, turmoil and fights the guys went through, he’s ultimately proud of what’s come from that season, even if it took a while to get there.

“This definitely feels like a timestamp of who we were,” he said.

And, to be clear, the guys are in a much better place now. After Kelcey Ayer, who co-founded the band with Rice, announced he was stepping away from the band to pursue solo projects, the group took an assessment of how they were all feeling.

Ultimately, Hahn assures that while there are still a few arguments and disagreements here and there — “we spent way too long arguing about the track list” — but overall, there’s a newfound gratitude among the band members.

“After everything, I’ve just come to really appreciate being in a band with these guys,” he said. “I’m grateful to have a band because that’s become such a rare thing these days.”

It’s a good perspective to have as the guys head out on tour this summer and fall. While they aren’t jumping right back in to the “carousel” of touring their albums indefinitely — a lesson they’ve learned from years of trial and error — they are excited to head back out on the road and see new and familiar faces.

“On this tour, we’re visiting a lot of cities we haven’t been to in a long time — I’m talking like at least a decade or so,” Ewing said.

Never ones to sit still, a few of the members are also working on solo albums — side projects that allow them to push themselves to new creative spaces while still staying committed to Local Natives’ future.

“I’ve always like writing and producing with other artists,” Hahn said, “and I just started working on some songs that I knew were too different from Local Natives. But I didn’t want to just give them away to a different artist; I wanted to really spend time on them and put them out on my own.”

However, while the guys venture out on their own, they’re not sweating the future of Local Natives. Life will continue to change, priorities may shift and new creative opportunities will arrive. But they know they’ll still come back together when the time is right. In fact, they’re already looking forward to their next chapter.

“I know we’re all working on stuff for the band individually, so when we get back in the studio we’re already going to have a bunch of ideas to work on,” Ewing said.

“Before we get the that exciting next phase, though, we’re excited to close this chapter of our lives,” Hahn said. “It was a long, drawn-out process to find our footing as a new band and reconnecting with one another and figuring everything out. But I’m glad we ended up here, and I’m glad that fans get to be part of this season of life with us.

“But, I’ll just say that we’re not planning on going through all of this again,” he laughed.

© 2023 RELEVANT Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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