Local Natives

8.14.22 • Jones Assembly • Oklahoma City, OK

Photos by Emma Watts + words by Liz Watts

Seeing Local Natives live for the first time in 3 years made it feel like every song played was made to be screamed, cried, and stomped to.

Blame it on Covid, or blame it on my increased awareness that I’m an extroverted introvert, but being stuck in the middle of a crowd and surrounded by reminders from my past in OKC made it hard to want to stay.

I spent two years going to college in Oklahoma City, and although it wasn’t all bad, it’s in the running for the *worst* growing pains of my life. During that time, I counted down the days until Local Native’s 3rd album, Sunlit Youth, was released. It immediately became my best friend. I even haggled with the local record store to get the promo poster from the shop window in exchange for the last of my broke-college-student-grocery money (it was worth it).

The comfort that Local Natives’ music brings me goes far beyond the spark of happiness I felt when Sunlit Youth came out in a seemingly hopeless few years. It quite literally was the soundtrack to my transformation into adulthood and the reason it’s tattooed on my body forever.

The relief of the lights going down and the music starting in a crowd I felt like drowning in brought that same familiar feeling I felt in 2016. Tune into the music and drop out of the scary and uncomfortable feeling your body is experiencing. I felt the kind of relief you get knowing you can seek solace during the pain, even though you know the pain won’t last forever.

There was a nostalgic connection between the crowd and the band as Local Natives sang songs about loss and love and grief. They swapped spots on stage and played tunes from all of their albums. We chanted to ‘Sun Hands’ and swayed to ‘Ceilings’ and melted into the glow of ‘Past Lives’. The band closed the show with an encore including 'Hourglass' - the band’s first original material since 2020’s Sour Lemon EP.

Then, just like that, it was over. The crowd dispersed and I stepped over beer cans, avoided bumping into ex-someones, and settled into the feeling of overlapping timelines with my favorite band.