Nada Surf

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. 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.

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 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.

“Whose Authority,” the second song on “Lucky,” sounds good at first, but gets repetitive by the second chorus. 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.

The third track happens to be the high point of the album. “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 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. The instrumentation, which includes a touch of strings here and there, helps this euphoric feeling along. In “Beautiful Beat” we see an example of repetition used well, a rarity on this album.

Then “Lucky” moves on to the filler tracks. 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.

“Are You Lightning,” the next track, is very long and sleepy. 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. 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. 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.

Throughout “Lucky,” Matthew Caws’ lyrics are often awkward. The words sometimes don’t fit quite right, occasionally splitting sentences across lines. Caws sounds as if he took a casual conversation with a bunch of guys and stuffed it into a musical format. But Nada Surf’s music tends to concentrate on melody more than poetry, so they think they can get away with it.

One final highlight, “The Fox,” doesn’t blend into the monotony. 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). “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.

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. A pared-down version of the album with three or four fewer songs wouldn’t have been so bad. We should have been so lucky.

—Reviewer Benjamin C. Burns can be reached at bcburns@fas.harvard.edu.