Toronto – My month of SXSW revisits (Temper Trap, The Drums..) continued Tuesday night as LA five piece band Local Natives took the sold out stage at the Mod Club. The anticpation was high, as this was the first time the band has visited Toronto since their debut album – Gorilla Manor was released. There was actually some doubts as to whether or not the band could make it as it was reported via the twitter that their bus had broken down earlier that day. Luckily for the crowd, they found a way.
I think I should give the concert four stars just based on lead singer Taylor Rice’s mustache alone. I don’t think it was as fully realized when i had seen them in march but now it appears to be in full bloom and in all it’s bushy quality, totally would make him a good candidate to play some sort of dastardly villain in some sort of western. As the sometimes focus point of the band, he put on a good show, rocking out on the guitar when need be and making a half hearted attempt to interact with the crowd. It was a late show, so I think most people didn’t mind that the band just sprinted through their hour long set.
As expected the band played most of the tunes off their debut album, wooing the crowd with an excellent blend of vocal harmonies (hello Fleet Foxes!) and dual tribal drumming. A Spinal Tap moment occured when multi instrumentalist Kelcey Ayer said “Hello Vancouver!” I wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not but the fact that he curled up on the Mod Club stage immediately afterwards seemed to indicate it was an honest mistake.
I was impressed with how much punch the band packed considering their album is a rather laid back affair. The use of double percussions added an extra ounce of intensity and combined with gang vocals, the band definitely made the songs of Gorilla Manor much more lively. Songs like Camera Talk and Shapeshifter surely benefited from the extra oomph and became soaring crowd pleaser’s as a result.
Taking a cue from “setlists for dummies” book that should be given to every band, the band ended their set with am explosive version of the song Sun Hands, arguably their most popular song. The song whipped the crowd into a frenzy and left them wanting more. One kind of wonders whether the song should have been used earlier in the set to get the crowd amped up, but you can’t deny the lasting appeal of exiting with your most popular song.