Kevin Bronson on April 21st, 2017

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As he has at most recent Local Natives shows, singer-guitarist Taylor Rice on Wednesday explained to the crowd at the sold-out Fox Theater in Pomona that their third album “Sunlit Youth” was informed by “this kind of overwhelming sense of positivity and hope for the future …” Which probably accounts for the lyrical reference to “Mrs. President” in the song “Fountain of Youth.”

On Wednesday, Rice added, in introducing the song, “I think for all of us for all Americans everybody the last many months have been super hard time for everybody. It’s been a really divisive time and this next song it has this idea that you know this is our world and we get a choice of which way we want to push it and everywhere we’ve gone on this tour and elsewhere, I see people [who] want to love each other [and] don’t want to be divided, and we just wanted to share that. But this is our choice and we have a chance to make things more united, and let’s love each other.”

With that, the L.A. quintet set the tone for their 90-minute show, which included songs from all three of their albums and Rice shedding his guitar and jumping into the crowd during “Villainy.” As they did at Weekend 1 of Coachella (and will likely do at Weekend 2), they capped the night with the exuberant tune “Sun Hands.”

Tennis, also doing a Coachella add-on show, opened the night.

Local Natives setlist: Jellyfish, Wide Eyes, Villainy, You & I, Breakers, Airplanes, Heavy Feet, Coins, I Saw You Close Your Eyes, Ultralight Beam, Past Lives, Dark Days, Ceilings, Wooly Mammoth, Colombia, Fountain of Youth, Who Knows, Who Cares. Encore: Masters, Sun Hands

Photos by Maxmilian Ho