Local Natives - Sunlit Youth
Local Natives - Sunlit Youth
It might seem strange that a record as approachable as Sunlit Youth took a few listens to really grow on me. Thanks go out to a couple readers for convincing me to give it another go.
The kind of earnestness on display in Taylor Rice's vocals was maybe a hair too close to the false, overblown emotion of some of today's mainstream "indie" radio and caused me to instinctively bristle. It's my own fault really, listen to enough music and you'll eventually listen in a sort of shorthand, categorizing things pretty much instantly. I'll be trying to break that habit.
But there's more subtlety on display here than I first accounted for. For one thing, the instrumentation and production here is simply fantastic, as is most of the songwriting. Dark Days, my favourite track on the record, sounds a bit like a modern update of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams (one of the best songs of all time), with it's twitchy guitar lines and plaintive vocal melodies.
So yeah, it's good. Listen to it.
Highlights: Dark Days • Masters • Mother Emanuel
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