Local Natives stage guerilla show on a Silver Lake rooftop — and it doesn’t get shut down

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Taylor Rice crowd-surfs during Local Natives' surprise show in Silver Lake (photo by Bronson)
Taylor Rice crowd-surfs during Local Natives' surprise show in Silver Lake (photo by Bronson)

“We can do whatever we want,” Local Natives declare in the big chorus of their anthemic new single, “Fountain of Youth,” unveiled Thursday.

Apparently that includes staging a guerilla-style concert on the rooftop of the Silver Lake practice space they are abandoning after years of using it. That’s what the L.A. quintet did on Thursday, playing a 45-minute set that everybody, including the band, expected to get shut down by authorities.

Except for an LAPD helicopter circling the proceedings a half-hour into the show, law enforcement showed no interest in five guys on the roof of a nondescript (though recently painted blue) building on a weed-strewn hillside on Sunset Boulevard. Local Natives’ fans did, though; hundreds who were tipped off by the quintet’s social media posts showed up, filling the yard, clogging the sidewalks and making for a lot of looky-loos at the corner of Sunset and Micheltorena Street.

“We’re playing this as a thank-you to the city of Los Angeles,” Taylor Rice told the crowd. “These can be cynical times, but there is hope.”

Twenty minutes into the set, with a drone buzzing overhead and neighbors looking on from the rooftop of the adjoining apartment building, Rice said, “That’s five songs — we didn’t expect to make it this far.”

So Rice and bandmates Kelcey Ayer, Ryan Hahn, Matt Frazier and Nik Ewing carried on. And on. And basically turned the evening into a greatest-hits set, playing eight old songs and three from their forthcoming third album “Sunlit Youth,” out Sept. 9.

The new single earned a big response; it’s a call to arms for a generation inheriting a world in chaos. They explained it this way in a Facebook post: “Socially, politically and personally we’ve felt many defeats, but have come back to the realization that this is our world to make. Consider the many victories, small and large, that have been going on around us these last couple of years. There’s a lot left to do, but we should feel hopeful that we are the ones who can do it, and we can do whatever we want.”

Thursday evening’s party ended with Rice clambering down from the rooftop to crowd-surf during the raucous finale, “Sun Hands.” It was the kind of joyous moment Local Natives have delivered repeatedly over their eight or so years as a band. But elsewhere at that very instant, in Dallas, things were going to hell, and the hundreds on a Silver Lake hillside hadn’t yet seen the headlines.

Hopefully they’ll catch the part of the new single that asks: “If we don’t change, then who’ll change?”

||| Stream: The new single “Fountain of Youth”

||| Live: Local Natives play the Greek Theatre on Sept. 16.