Nada Surf (18+ Event)

Nada Surf"Did you ever, as a kid, want to crawl into the speakers?" asks Nada Surf singer-guitarist Matthew Caws. "I did here was OK, but there was much better." And that's pretty much what Nada Surf is all about Caws, bassist Daniel Lorca, and drummer Ira Elliot are in love with he way rock music can transport you to a new and wonderful place in a beguiling rush of beats, chords, hooks and words. And they do it 10 times over on their brilliant sixth album, The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy.Before,… Show more Nada Surf albums simply took on the character of the songs that the band came up with at the time. This one was different there was a plan. "We've always played faster and a little harder live," Caws says, "but we'd play so carefully in the studio. So with this album, we made a conscious decision to preserve what it felt like in the practice room, when you play with that new-song energy. Just embrace it and not worry whether were overdoing it, kind of get allthe thinking out of the way."Sure enough, The Stars leaps out of the gate in a blaze of guitars, swarming distortion and a sweet melody riding atop "Clear Eye Clouded Mind." Throughout, the crackerjack rhythm section of Lorca and Elliot puts the power in Nada Surf's pop, Lorca playing equal parts pedestal and filigree, Elliot ever the stylish dynamo. The tempos are high, but the songs bristle with hooks, breathtaking changes, and Nada Surf's trademark genius bridges. The educated ear will hear the influence of many bands from '60s Brit-pop to post-punk and vintage indie, and yet there is an unmistakable Nada Surf sound: a certain rhythm section groove, introspective chord shapes and the unique emotional weight to Caws's voice, both boyish and very soulful, a combination of wisdom and vulnerability that can admit to being "moved to a tear by a subway breakdancer.""I really love Nada Surf," author Jennifer Egan told Minnesota Public Radio this year, adding that she listened to the band's music for inspiration while writing her 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. "What they write about is very subtle moments of everyday life. They make it all look and feel very easy and natural." Which is quite a trick when, as on The Stars, the running theme of the album is the passage of time. As Caws sings on "Looking Through," "Every birthday candle/ that ever got blown out/ is one more year/ of someone trying/ to figure it all out." The songs ponder all kinds of questions: what to take and leave from youth, how to deal with the burden and the honor of responsibility, how to remain curious and alert even when you're content and how to remain in the natural world as the march of progress pulls us ever further from it. It's all summed up in the last lines of the album: "and I cannot believe / the future's happening to me."

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