Nada Surf - The Weight is a Gift (2005)This band falls into the category of, "Wow, you really blew that one, Ashley."
As mentioned in my Rogue Wave post, I wrote a piece on them when I wrote for the ASU paper. It was to advance their show with Nada Surf and the woman at Sub Pop offered me a spot on the list if I wanted to go. AND I DIDN'T. I can't remember my reasoning, probably something awesome like having to see the same local band for the 50th time down at Modified, but needless to say I regret it to this day and have now seen Nada Surf upwards of 8 times in about 2 years to make up for it.
Even that lack of judgment doesn't compare to the fact that I went as long as I did without listening to them, despite how long they had been around. I obviously knew the "Popular" song and many of my favorite bands cited this one as an influence, so I'm not sure where it didn't connect. I'm not even sure when it did, actually. I think I remember seeing/hearing Travis Bryant from Alive in Wild Paint mention it and for some reason I finally woke up and bought it around Winter-time 2008. I took it with me on a trip to El Paso with my family for my Grandfather's birthday and remember how awesome a song like "Concrete Bed" sounded as we left at 4AM across a bare New Mexico.
The lyrics are what really carry this album moreso than any of their other work. Nada Surf are the kings of the great one-liners and have the ability to make a story as mundane as taking out the trash and there being fruit flies circling around into a huge crowd hit is amazing. They can also play it simple and get a huge response with just "Awww fuck it, I'm gonna have a party!". However one of my favorite song lyrics of all time comes from this album and the song, "Do It Again", one which provides the namesake of the entire record. It goes : "When I accelerate I remember why it's good to be alive. Maybe this weight was a gift, like I had to see what I could lift." I know that line has meant a lot to other people as well.
The thing that gets me most about Nada Surf is that I tend to associate them with various boys I've dated. It's strange, considering for the most part their songs are overtly love-y (except, well, "Always Love" and "Inside of Love") but they seem to just be around when these boys pop up. The album Let Go didn't make the cut for our purposes, but was a memorable time riding with one aforementioned boy in the car and him getting all worked up with "DUUUDE, you say you love Nada Surf but you haven't heard the record they made that could have been one of the best pop records of all time?!?!" (ironically, that's the album that features the song "Blonde on Blonde" which is the album Jack Black's character freaks out about in a similar way in High Fidelity) For the record, listen to "Blizzard of '77" on that record. It might be one of the best songs of all time. . . . It also served as a soundtrack to one of my biggest relationship regrets, by way of a boy that I started getting into during SXSW of that year (as I was chasing Nada Surf around the festival, to no avail) and who I never should have let go (it all comes full circle, yeah?) I still think of him whenever I hear this record (emo). It's important to make music your own in that way, so it becomes human.
All in all, this is a band I've been able to share with a lot of friends, from my haphazard fan friends to my elitist hipster friends, they all love Nada Surf. I'm so glad I didn't go any longer without them in my life.
I haven't really been posting acoustic videos of the "rock" bands I feature, but it works for this band, and this song.
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