The band did more recording with Juan Garcia at the Magic Shop in New York, where Caws had been an intern a few years before. Funding came in the form of the “wrinkled singles and fives” made from a cross-country tour on the way to the West Coast. Most of Let Go was recorded in Los Angeles with Chris Fudurich, engineer for The Proximity Effect sessions. With no deadlines or anyone looking over their shoulders, the three spent long hours in their practice space working through songs and listening to music. The album floundered, and Nada Surf was dropped.įree of Elektra, vocalist/guitarist Matthew Caws, bassist Daniel Lorca and drummer Ira Elliot attempted workaday lives in New York City as they started on the music that would become Let Go. No one at the label could hear a hit single on High/Low’s 1998 follow-up, The Proximity Effect. After its 1996 debut, High/Low, scored the group its only mainstream hit with “Popular,” it wasn’t long before the band’s relationship with Elektra Records began to deteriorate. Reviewer Benjamin C.In the months before recording Let Go, Nada Surf was free enjoy the ultimate luxury: time. A pared-down version of the album with three or four fewer songs wouldn’t have been so bad. The album closes with a mediocre lullaby about love and dying, which emphasizes the cello even more, but fails to hold the listener’s attention. “The Fox” manages to convey a sense of foreboding thanks in part to the haunting cello, which is quite a relief after so much uniform distortion. Sparse drumbeats and a wandering bass line make for a very original interplay with a vibratto-heavy guitar (think “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” but less cheesy). One final highlight, “The Fox,” doesn’t blend into the monotony. But Nada Surf’s music tends to concentrate on melody more than poetry, so they think they can get away with it. Caws sounds as if he took a casual conversation with a bunch of guys and stuffed it into a musical format. The words sometimes don’t fit quite right, occasionally splitting sentences across lines. Throughout “Lucky,” Matthew Caws’ lyrics are often awkward. If it weren’t for the broken-record of a chorus, which just repeats “I like what you say” in different orders, this could be a great single. At least this gives bassist Daniel Lorca, who weirdly resembles Kevin Spacey in a dreadlock wig, a lot of room for an interesting bass line. It’s only followed by “I Like What You Say,” the album’s first single, which uses the same acoustic E chord for the entire song. “Are You Lightning,” the next track, is very long and sleepy. Subsequent songs channel Simon and Garfunkel (“Here Goes Something”) or try to mix things up with a 6/4 time signature (“Weightless”), but they end up just being tiring. Then “Lucky” moves on to the filler tracks. In “Beautiful Beat” we see an example of repetition used well, a rarity on this album. The instrumentation, which includes a touch of strings here and there, helps this euphoric feeling along. The emphasis is once again on Caws’ milky tenor, and with lyrics like “Beautiful beat, lift me up from distress” the song sounds like meditation set to rock music. “Beautiful Beat” is a sunny-day anthem layered with an acoustic center and a solid drum cadence which focuses on dramatic toms in the verses. The third track happens to be the high point of the album. While Nada Surf usually uses their guitar tones in novel ways, the three minutes of steady pseudo-country on “Whose Authority” portend the monotony to come. “Whose Authority,” the second song on “Lucky,” sounds good at first, but gets repetitive by the second chorus. The double-time chorus isn’t as magnetic as these groovy verses, but the song does seamlessly switch from minor to major as it moves to a multilayered climax. One of the three or so songs which manages to stand out is the opening number, “See These Bones.” A ringing guitar part and frontman Matthew Caws’ bright, clear voice start the album off on a melancholy tone that’s backed up by heavy bass and a perfect broken-down drum pattern. The alt-rock trio lays down eleven solid tracks, but “Lucky” isn’t particularly special coming from a band which has produced fantastic material in the past. Nada Surf was once as “Popular” as their aptly titled angsty nineties hit, but they’ll need to be more than “Lucky,” their hopefully-titled fifth studio album, to shoot back to the top of the charts.
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