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Jan 29, 2013From the first sung note of Hummingbird, Local Natives are frank in their presentation of a serious album, challenging listeners to heal along with them; cognizant that investment is proportional to remuneration.
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Jan 29, 2013Overall, Hummingbird is a wonderful album. Each song manifests itself in a truly attractive manner and it's a release that's very much focused in the aesthetic.
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Jan 28, 2013As bright and warm a guitar-based indie pop album as that [debut album, Gorilla Manor] was, it left a fair amount of room for expansion and maturity. On second album Hummingbird, that growth is readily apparent from the first track.
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Jan 28, 2013Hummingbird proves that these guys are maturing into a sound that's both singular and wrenching with severity.
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Jan 28, 2013With patience, Hummingbird's panorama comes into full view, and it is one full of arrestingly arranged set pieces and an impressive sense of economy.
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Feb 11, 2013It is this cycle of futility and human effort that makes Hummingbird so compelling, and so much more rewarding the second time around
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Jan 28, 2013With Hummingbird, Local Natives have made a thoughtful, lovely album with small gestures that provide great rewards.
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May 17, 2013Produced by Aaron Dessner of the National, the Brooklyn, N.Y., indie rockers who once took Local Natives on the road as the opening act, the album feels like a pronouncement, as if to highlight how much the quartet has grown since its last outing.
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May 17, 2013Hummingbird feels wiser, grander, and more knowing.
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Q MagazineFeb 8, 2013The deeper emotions being stirred this time around fans out to several other highlights. [Mar 2013, p.106]
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Feb 1, 2013Hummingbird may not be as instantly likable as Gorilla Manor, but its seductive beauty and emotional pull is virtually impossible to resist.
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Feb 1, 2013This ain't perfect, nor is it exactly sui generis, but it still ought to bump up their summer-festival-lineup-poster font size by a solid five points or so.
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Jan 31, 2013[Mt Washington is] an early contender for song of the year, with Local Natives themselves current frontrunners for unexpectedly brilliant comeback of 2013.
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Jan 31, 2013They were scratching at the surface of their emotional capabilities on their debut. With Hummingbird, Local Natives show that they can dig deeper.
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Jan 29, 2013This isn't the boldest step forward, but it looks like Local Natives are on a steady ascent and Hummingbird is sure to solidify them as one of the best indie-rock bands out there today.
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Jan 28, 2013For all its sadness, Hummingbird manages to craft a friscalating, sun-setting, post-adolescence in the rear-view mirror.
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Jan 28, 2013There is no shortage of shimmery songcraft here.
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Jan 28, 2013Opener You & I setting the tone, all unhurried melancholia topped by Kelcey Ayer's soaring vocal. Elsewhere, they show they're equally adept at the euphoria in which Arcade Fire deal.
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Under The RadarJan 17, 2013Hummingbird plays like a sophisticated and logical forward progression. [Jan-Feb 2013, p.88]
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Mar 13, 2013Hummingbird's layers complement its psychic search.
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Entertainment WeeklyFeb 1, 2013The follow-up sometimes feels like its coasting down a long but not-so-steep hill. [8 Feb 2013, p.75]
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Feb 21, 2013From start to finish, Hummingbird is a compelling record that warrants your enduring affections.
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Feb 13, 2013There’s an undercurrent of stormy emotionalism that really comes out on the band’s second album.
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Jan 31, 2013While there's nothing as immediately engaging on Hummingbird as Gorilla Manor's "Wide Eyes," the album compensates with beauty and seriousness.
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Jan 29, 2013Sometimes, the results are heavily wrought and obviously worked over (the muddled instrumentation in the chorus of Breakers comes to mind), and some of the skittering grooves (the spastic tribal pounding of Wooly Mammoth) don't quite fit in the album's overarching arc. Nevertheless, the stately elegance of Hummingbird emphasizes how Local Natives are fit for the role of indie rock saviors.
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Jan 28, 2013Local Natives' sophomore effort, 2013's Hummingbird, is a more atmospheric and introspective collection of songs in contrast to the band's effusive 2009 breakthrough debut Gorilla Manor.
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Jan 17, 2013The result is a bolder, brighter record than their debut.
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Jan 29, 2013Hummingbird is an album of hidden rewards, a record to pick and choose tracks from in order to purvey a single feeling or contribute to the perfect mixtape. What it's not, though, is a cohesive, compelling whole.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 52 out of 56
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Mixed: 3 out of 56
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Negative: 1 out of 56
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Apr 25, 2013
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Feb 3, 2013
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Aug 12, 2013