Tom Lynch

The mid-nineties was a strange, strange time.

Nada Surf had a hit. A big hit. It was called "Popular," a satiric look at the depth charts of high-school totem poles, the soap-opera dramas of dating and the quarterback-head-cheerleader hookup inevitability. Remember it? MTV loved it. The kids loved it. The video was a riot. And then the band disappeared.

Elektra wanted another "Popular," and the record that song was on, "High/Low," produced by Ric Ocasek, didn't have one, and Nada Surf was adamant about not writing another radio single that could be viewed as a joke. "The Proximity Effect," the band's second record, didn't have the radio-friendly tone of the first effort and, thus, Elektra said never. The band was alone, forced to release the record by itself.

"We had learned a lot making the first two records," says Ira Elliot, Nada Surf's drummer. "We had the major-label fiasco. We had been beaten up a little bit on the second record. We were disappointed. ["Popular"] was this ridiculous song, a fluke, a joke. You can't recreate that. I think Elektra was looking to recreate that, but we couldn't do it."

In 2003, Nada Surf was reborn on Seattle's Barsuk label, the same label that currently comforts John Vanderslice and Rilo Kiley and originally launched Death Cab for Cutie. With "Let Go," the band's third release, Nada Surf had created a pop masterpiece, a deliriously astounding and surprising collection of soulful indie-rock, completely unexpected by the world at large.

"It was a rebirth," Elliot says. "We kind of calmed down. We became much more comfortable, I think because of the way the fiasco all went down. Those were really bleak hours. We were like, `What the fuck do we do now?' But, we weathered the storm. We knew our best stuff was yet to come. We weren't gonna be taken out by the corporations, not the likes of Elektra, fuck that. We kind of came back from the dead."

With "The Weight Is a Gift," Nada Surf continues its reinvention in the indie world with another pitch-perfect gem, an ample follow-up to a beloved record that should gather the band an even steadier fan base. The songs are punchy, some quiet, some not, and Matthew Caws' lyrics still ring with sarcasm and pop-culture extremism, though quite introspective in all the appropriate places. It's comparable to "Let Go," for sure, but different, more aged with a bit more wisdom.

"I've been talking about that quite a bit," says Elliot of the differences between the two records. "When you finish something like ["The Weight Is a Gift"] you don't really have a sense of what it is because you're way too close to it. We get different responses to it. People kind of hear what they want to hear. I don't think it's that different. In spirit, lessons learned were carried on through this record. We had a calm confidence."

When the band entered the studio with engineer Chris Walla, it barely had any new songs. "We were trying to create on our feet," says Elliot. "Whatever idea comes by you flesh it out and make it work. We were kind of playing Tetris with orphaned parts, changing keys and such. It was occasionally fruitful, occasionally frustrating and painful. There were some moments where we just hit our heads. There wasn't a master plan. `How can we breathe life into this, make it spontaneous?' We tried to keep it simple so we could add things later. Just simple and spontaneous. A lot of times in trying to make a record, I often try to put myself in a mindset of `How would this band approach this problem?' Like, `What would The Clash do?' We were always looking for our Clash moment."

The result is completely different than one would expect from the threesome that gave us "Popular," a welcomed change that's garnered deserving praise thus far. "When we first started off," says Elliot, "we figured maybe we could sign to Touch and Go or Matador. We were always indie rock at heart. That's our esthetic. To be on Elektra was really weird. We debated that choice. We knew what was gonna happen. We didn't go in blind, but with the best hopes. But, if you're not Korn you're gonna get trampled. Being on Barsuk is a dream. I guess we just had to take the long way home."

Nada Surf plays October 14 at Metro.

(2005-10-11)

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