Native

Wrestling Moves is now on Vinyl and available for Pre-Order at Topshelf Records

First pressing is of 500 split between 100 Clear w/ Orange Splatter, 150 Maroon, and 250 Black. This item includes a copy of the album on vinyl and will come with a download card. - Orders will ship in October. Click HERE for more info

We’re happy to announce that on October 18th our friends over at Topshelf Records will be releasing Native’s Wrestling Moves on vinyl. Wrestling Moves was recorded in 2009 at Red Room Studios with Chris Common (Pelican, These Arms Are Snakes) and originally released on CD in January of 2010 by Sargent House. Stay tuned for more details on how to order it. 

 
Native
Wrestling Moves (2010) Sargent House

Native’ s full-length, Wrestling Moves is, in a nutshell, challenging math rock tinged with post-hardcore in the vein of Fugazi. This album is full of wonderful musicianship, challenging and engaging lyrics, and a drummer that blows me away. 

Native begin the record with “Backseat Crew”, a seriously jamming tune that begins with a creative drumbeat that only evolves into something more complex and refreshing. That is a good word to describe this band: refreshing, as this band is breathing new life into a dead variation of post-hardcore. The songs that this band compose evolve and rearrange with every passing second, gaining momentum or completely abandoning it; whatever it is, this band is something beautiful. 

Next on the track listing is “Legoland”. The lyrics and bass of this song shine and it is definitely one of the album’s standout tracks, not to mention the longest, clocking in at just under five-and-a-half minutes. Bassist/vocalist Bobby Marcos exclaims with his sharp yelp, “This glass is a safe, holding my age. Rip off the fake nails and follow the tracks of a deer up ahead.” With this song, other gems like “Ponyboy” and the title track, Native sculpts passionate landscapes of sound that blow me away with every listen. They can only get better. 

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By: John J Frusciante
Native - Wrestling Moves (Sargent House)

Formed in Indiana in 2007, Native plays gritty, churning post-hardcore that bursts forward on throbbing rhythms and aggressive guitar lines and sounds like
13 Songs-era Fugazi mixed with Cobra Kai. This full-length debut follows their well-received EP We Delete; Erase and lives up to the band’s hype, buzzing with jolts of electric adrenaline from start to finish. It’s no surprise this effort was produced by Chris Common of These Arms Are Snakes; all the genre’s bells and whistles are here, including staccato rhythms, vocals chanted far away from microphones, colorful melodies that build to huge chords. Opener “Backseat Crew” is a swirling powerhouse that ebbs and flows on huge crashing waves of sharp guitars and deftly-played drums and shows of one of the great strengths of this album: dazzling and perfectly-placed changes in tempo. “Shirts and Skins” has the push and pull of a solidly built machine whose parts work together flawlessly. Vocalist/bassist Bobby Markos’s lyrics lamenting the failures of communication and relationships and railing against old systems are half spoken and half screamed with raspy, acidic desperation. The instrumental “Mason Jars” and the mostly-instrumental “Marco Polo” are so solid that it’s easy to imagine Native putting out an album of instrumental songs that would stand up on its own. Wrestling Moves is built on tight, exacting song structures. It’s aggressive. It means something. Native gets it and they know what they’re doing. There’s a passion here that is left out of the flimsy efforts of many who try emulating this style. Clearly, they’ve shed serious sweat in unfinished basements screaming into mics and blowing out amplifiers while surrounded by tight circles of kids clad in hooded sweatshirts and Floor punch t-shirts. With Wrestling Moves, that loss of sweat is our gain.

“They might be young, but these Indiana punks have forged something memorable and unique with their debut full-length, Wrestling Moves. Clearly growing up under the influence of classic post-punk bands like Fugazi and Shellac, Native have succeeded in forging something original from the discordant madness of those bands and the catchy, intricate guitar interplay of ’90s Midwest staples like Braid and American Football. The result is a record full of songs that play to, rather than indulge, their members’ technical strengths, swinging between the subtle and the cacophonous. Songs like “Five Year Payoff” and “Ponyboy” capture the band at their best, demonstrating a perfect understanding of the dynamics of a great post-hardcore song, highlighting the clarity of the album’s production. Wrestling Moves is, without a doubt, a sharp-sounding document that lets each member’s contributions shine through the minimal mix. For anyone looking for their fix of Small Brown Bike-style ragers, Native have succeeded in banging out ten fine examples, emulating the best of their influences while retaining a delivery and songwriting style that belong to them alone.”

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Decoy Music review’s Native’s new album Wrestling Moves

“If at first Native just sound like a bunch of young musicians too eager to twiddle their guitars aimlessly behind senseless yelling, listen harder and then listen again. The Indiana band’s latest, Wrestling Moves, is quite the journey to get into, but once its 90’s post hardcore-cum-instrumental passages style sinks in, you’ll be lucky to escape from its grasp. Pretty impressive for a band that formed in 2007, huh? It’ll be even more impressive – and this I’m sure of - when it turns out the album is one of the best things 2010 will hear.”

Wrestling Moves recalls brand names like At The Drive-In and Fugazi, but thankfully never opts for the lazy route by simply paying tribute to their predecessors. From the ferocity of “Ponyboy” to the oscillating riffs in “Marco Polo” to the shouted vocals and deliciously technical drumming that lace their way through the album, Native show off energy that is wholly unique and mesmerizing. Try not to get addicted when Bobby Markos proclaims, “Rise! Take thanks for creation / We side with those who are humble,” on “Shirts and Skins.” Good luck with that.

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“Sargent House is a young record label. At only three years old, the label helmed by Cathy Pellow has managed to amass a roster of diverse and critically acclaimed bands such as RX Bandits, These Arms Are Snakes and Russian Circles. The youngest band, figuratively and literally, in the Sargent House lineup is Indiana based quartet Native. In a label filled with well establish acts that have progressed themselves, and music in general, Native fit in perfectly. Just attempting to describe Native’s sound is a difficult task, as the band accumulates stylings from post-hardcore, indie, math-rock and progressive music. In a sentence, Native sounds like Minus the Bear being strangled by These Arms Are Snakes. The band self-released and toured for two years off their debut EP We Delete; Erase, before hitting the studio with highly praised producer Chris Common (These Arms Are Snakes, Pelican) to produce their first full length Wrestling Moves. Sargent House redistributed Native’s We Delete EP which gained the band a lot of buzz in the music community, only adding to the anticipation of critics and fans alike for the band’s debut full length. Does Wrestling Moves live up to the hype and cement Native as the next big thing for the label? In short: Abso-***in’-lutely.

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Native – Wrestling Moves
Record Label: Sargent House

“It’s to Native’s credit that the most jarring aspect of Wrestling Moves is also its most hidden. A band with so much screeching and so little paucity of any type will inevitably create layers. Some more immediate than others (like Bobby Markos’ frantic vocalizing), these tiers of post-hardcore mathiness tend to make for a dense record, one that’s in need of some serious unwrapping. Wrestling Moves would be a gag gift if its climaxes weren’t so everlasting. And after you remove the at-times heavy chugging of guitarists Ed O’Neil and Dan Evans, or the through-the-telephone effects of Markos, you see that what Markos is saying, what this music is actually about, makes it so much more than some indie record that we’ll all pretend to like just because we’re supposed to. On “Five Year Payoff”, a slow-moving force of a song, Markos uses cryptic effects to hide his super simple message: “These verses show readers the pictures of history / Words will age but never will fade.” Switch that light bulb on.

To describe a song on Wrestling Moves is to describe a soooong. And by giving the listener gobfuls to play with, we are allowed to overcome the initial feeling of extreme musical gluttony and pick out only the most nourishing parts. The fullness fades into a yearning for content, and that’s exactly what Wrestling Moves possesses. “Marco Polo” features but two lines from Markos, and yet despite my masturbatory remarks above, it’s the album’s finest piece. For nearly too long, a lone guitar chisels away in hopes of finding a rewarding melody, but once the discovery is made it is gone again. Markos does his best Pyramids impersonation and hammers us all to hell in less than a minute. A song like this takes trust in not only one’s talent but also in one’s listener. For an overactive band like Native to make us sit and chew for 3+ minutes, and for it to be a success, is almost unthinkable. Think of “Marco Polo” as a re-imagining.

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Artist: Native
Album: Wrestling Moves
Genre: Indie Rock
Label: Sargent House
Score: 9.5/10

It’s finally here! The UTG Staff’s pick for “Most Anticipated” album of Fall 2009, Native’s Wrestling Moves. I have been lucky enough to spend the last couple weeks with the record and though I wanted to wait until the Halloween [ish] release, I just couldn’t wait any longer to talk about this work of art. Yea, I said it, it’s not just music or noise, it’s [meticulously well done] art and though their sound has moved to a bit more progressive vibe than their prior releases, Native is still Native and that’s really all anyone could ask of them.

Now, I know some of you may go into this review thinking their is a built in bias as the group has previously been featured on the site, but one should note that given the amount of excitement we’ve had for this record and the many months spent waiting to actually hear it, the bar is/was set extremely high. In fact, I feared we’d overdone it a bit, but then, I heard the album.

Starting off with, “Backseat Crew” and moving forward into “Legoland” and “Mason Jars,” Native quickly gets to work doing what they do best, creating a sonic atmosphere in which to create their style of music. It’s something captivating about them both live and on record as they seem to waste not a second of time their given to transport listeners from wherever they are to the universe of Native. It’s a land rich with bass and drum lines and littered with melodic guitar work that not only consumes, but moves anyone who hears it. It’s pretty obvious right from the beginning that the vocals have taken a much more front and center position on this release. Though not shoved in your face level wise, all vocal lines are noticeably louder than on previous works and the lyrical depth and content is more expansive than ever. Finally, the message and sound BOTH have grandeur and without stepping too far from the groundwork the group has been laying for years. Yes, it is different, but not shockingly so. There’s no sudden burst of harmonized singing or epic hooks. More like the indie version of battle cries set to the most intricate, yet atmospheric soundtrack possible.

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