The name of Local Natives' latest album, Sunlit Youth, evokes the band's California home. Local Natives' Taylor Rice explains the album emerged after the band returned home after wrapping up a long stretch of touring. "We found ourselves back home in L.A., and really just finding it this inspiring, beautiful place to be in this world of possibility," he says.

Local Natives — Rice, along with Ryan Han, Kelcey Ayer, Nik Ewing and Matt Frazier — are now touring in support of Sunlit Youth, and while visiting the Twin Cities for a show at First Avenue, they stopped in to The Current's studio for a session hosted by Jade.

Although the band members wrote plenty of songs for their latest album at home on Los Angeles, they did feel like they could stretch their wings in many different ways. "For the most part, we've written songs in a room," Han says. "This time around, it was so much more open … we wrote songs on airplanes or in hotel rooms or at home in the kitchen. We recorded all over the world, a lot of these songs are collages of iPhone recordings at my house with drum recordings in Thailand. There was a feeling that we could experiment and use new instruments, sample old recordings and even just put our guitars down and re-imagine what a Local Natives song could be."

Part of that imagining involved brainstorming who might be a good vocal complement to on the track, "Dark Days," with the band unanimously choosing Nina Persson of the Cardigans. "We were thinking, 'What would be the craziest idea, like the most incredibly perfect voice for this?'," Rice recalls. "Nina was on the very, very top of the list when we were talking about it one day. Essentially, I wrote her an email and said, 'Hi Nina' and told her about the song and why I thought she'd be great for it, and she wrote back , 'I love the song, I would love to sing on it'. So we FaceTimed with her and she sang it from Sweden where she lives."

The experience culminated in Persson flying out to Los Angeles to perform with Local Natives at the Greek Theatre there. "It was just a magic descending upon us," Rice says of the band's experience with Persson.

Listen to the complete session using the audio player above.

Songs Performed

"Past Lives"
"Dark Days"
"Fountain of Youth"
All songs from Local Natives' 2016 album, Sunlit Youth, available on Loma Vista Recordings.

Hosted by Jade
Produced by Derrick Stevens
Engineered by Michael DeMark and Jalen Russell
Visuals by Nate Ryan
Web feature by Luke Taylor

Resources

Local Natives - official site

Gallery

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