Local Natives and Sharon Van Etten have teamed up on a sublime acoustic single, “Lemon,” which will be one of a quartet of songs on the Natives’ new EP, “Sour Lemon.”
The EP arrives next Friday, a year and a half after the L.A. quintet’s fourth album “Violet Street” (which also spawned a couple of remix EPs). Local Natives have never been ones to release EPs, but, they said on social media, “We’re always working on new music, but songs tend to come at their own pace. There’s something freeing about writing without the goal of an album in mind. It feels like waking up for class only to realize that it’s Saturday and you can sleep in as long as you want. The songs on ‘Sour Lemon’ each have their own long histories but they all finally decided to arrive at the same time. Rather than waiting, we decided to share them as soon as we could.”
“Lemon” follows last month’s single “Statues in the Garden (Arras),” the video for which had lots and lots and lots of lemons.
The contemplative video for “Lemon,” directed by Kenny Laubbacher, features Local Natives’ Taylor Rice and Van Etten strolling on opposite sides of the Los Angeles River (deprecated in the lyric “The L.A. River makes you laugh / You say, why’s a gutter got a name like that?”). Well, it is pretty at that time of night.
The track feels like an expansion of the sound formed on last year’s Violet Street with an expansive guitar solo playing it out. “Arras” is a reference to the town in France where the song was first demoed.
“Lemon”, out at 12AM EST on October 16th
