Metamorphoses are only sometimes good. Starting off as quirky geek rockers, Nada Surf spent the late nineties in a kind of limbo, never really popular enough to warrant MTV airtime, and never edgy enough to capture the true heart of the Indie scene. Instead, they were relegated to sad, one hit wonder status, and after four years even their fans had given up on anything more happening.
y the time Let Go hit the stores in late 2002, the entire scene was ready for a shake up. While Wilco was revitalizing the entire Americana genre, Nada Surf had set themselves to reinventing power pop. And reinvent they did.
The first thing to remember when listening to this album is what it’s not. It’s not an ironic, aren’t-I-the-dickens congolmerate of self-referential barbs at modern life. It’s not an angry, bitter, or sarcastic album. It’s not anything that would identify it as being in the same mileu as the sad, recent crop of “rockers” like Yellow Card.
Rather, this is earnest. It’s sincere, honest, heartfelt, sunny, and sad. There are touches of acoustic sensitivity, mid-tempo rocking, charm, and introspection.
“Blizzard of ‘77? starts off with a layered acoustic guitar strum. Snowfall and tripping on acid bring about memories of missing love and life. “But in the middle of the night i worry/It’s blurry even without light/I miss you more than I knew,” Matthew Caws croons, as the guitars slowly fade away into nothing. The same strumming, only now augmented with electric distortion, begins “Happy Kid.” “I’m just a happy kid/Stuck with the heart of a sad punk/Drowning in my id/Always searching like it’s on junk.” This is the one attempt at irony Nada Surf make, and it’s fairly successful. Despite that, it’s wildly out of character.
“Inside of Love” is next. Ethereal, meandering, and exquisitely beautiful, it tells the sad story of nihilistic youth culture, the boredom with modern romance, and the emptiness it brings. “Making out with people/I hardly know or like/I can’t believe what I do/Late at night/I wanna know what it’s like/On the inside of love,” Caws sings, bringing us into that world with his plaintive, searching voice. The guitars rise into an augmented chord, and, just as hope begins to well, drop back down to where they came from. The song follows this pattern thoughout, rising with energy for the chorus, then dropping back into normalcy for the verse. It follows the roller coaster of a normal romance cycle, both in lyrics and music. “Of course i’ll be alright,” he says, “I just had a bad night.” Gorgeous.
Article comments