Album Details

• Artist: The Locals
• Album: Big Picture
• Label: indie
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2009-11-24

The Locals are a band out of Chicago, Illinois that have a nice crossover of The Pretenders and No Doubt, minus the ska. Yes, they are female fronted and a very powerful woman at that. And you know, Yvonne Doll and her little group have some pretty catchy songs here on their fourth full-length album, Big Picture. You can tell that Yvonne is a veteran vocalist with quite a powerful set of lungs.

The album opens with their lead single, called "Tidal Wave" and it sounds like Gwen Stefani singing for Pearl Jam. . One of the more outstanding tracks is the driving "Together Alone". The album ends with the simply stated "Gone", a great representative song of the bands pop/rock style.  I found that on Big Picture there wasn't quite enough diversity to hold me for the entire album. With that being said, there were some times when I really got into the pop grooves of Yvonne's wonderfully robust voice.  A different combo but it works.

The Locals might need to change their name to get a little more press and to make it easier to be found on old Google but if they are content with just the "local" scene in Chicago then there is nothing this established group needs to do. In fact, Yvonne brought to my attention the battle they had with Epitaph's The Matches over the name. You can read all about it on the E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals entry on Wikipedia. I might suggest a little more spent on mastering to clarify the listen a bit but otherwise the Big Picture is perfectly listenable.

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