On Hummingbird, Local Natives match their already developed abilities to construct propulsive, explosive indie-rock with a sense of restraint and the sublimely beautiful to produce one of the year’s finest albums so far.
This LA-born quartet has impressed me on so many levels, and Hummingbird is an album that logically follows over two years of touring for a debut album. Rather than crank out another record when the buzz was on, Local Natives have proven that there may be a better way to do things, touring with indie giants The National and undoubtedly carefully developing their approach to what would become a phenomenal second album. In fact, The National’s Aaron Dessner helped produce the album, and his fingerprint is clear in the songs’ slow boiling, soaring elements and drum production.
Here is an album so good it’s hard to know where to start or what to call attention to as a highlight. Obviously, the raw power of album single “Breakers” emerges as one of the record’s most triumphant moments. However, every song provides something vital to the total success of these eleven songs—an album with parts and whole equally convincing.
Hummingbird possesses raucous moments as on the snare-propelled “Wooly Mammoth” as well as gorgeous, subdued tracks, such as the beautiful “Three Months,” which features singer Kelcey Ayer restraining his vocals just enough to both build the song’s structure and retain a quiet sense of tension just beneath the surface. I love the quirky guitar hook for “Black Balloons,” although it doesn sound identical to the hook from opening track “Pink Light” from Laura Veirs’ 2007 album Saltbreakers. Streamlined, steady pop rooted in acoustic guitars and flanked by sparse piano defines “Mt. Washington,” an understated and fantastic late-album cut.
Tucked away in the second to last track, “Columbia,” is the reference to the album’s title as Ayer sings, “A hummingbird crashed right in front of me,” drawing an implicit metaphor between the death of this fragile bird and the apparent loss of someone close to the narrator. Ultimately, the song poses the question—“Am I loving enough?” The fact that a song about the limited amount of time we have on this earth gives the album its title sheds some light on the band’s newfound sense of delicate beauty.
As much buzz as was generated by Gorilla Manor, nothing could have predicted the masterful approach to Hummingbird. It took Local Natives three years to write, record, and release their second album, but they definitely got it right.
