SOUNDTRACK: NADA SURF-High/Low (1996) & The Proximity Effect (1998).
High/Low. This CD features the “novelty” hit “Popular” from some years back, you remember, the spoken word bit about trying to impress your high school sweetheart by washing your hair “every two weeks, once, every two weeks.” The song is pretty great, even after the novelty factor has worn off. However, you may feel that you got screwned (see What I Learned… (5)) if you thought the rest of the record would sound like that. For the most part High/Low is kind of forgettable, and a surprising lead off point to what are some really fine follow-up albums. Overall the sound is, not quite murky, but very samey. So that even the catchy parts sort of blend together. It was not until their next album that they start to show some great songwriting.
The Proximity Effect. As I understand it, when Nada Surf didn’t produce a hit like “Popular” for their second album, the label dropped them. Which is typically short-sighted because The Proximity Effect is a much better album. In fact, it contains a song akin to “Popular” called “Mother’s Day” but it is so much darker–almost the anti-“Popular.” It too has a spoken word type vocal, and yet the song is an anti-rape song. A dark subject to be sure, but the guitar riff is so great it stays in your head, and you wind up thinking even more about the song. The first four songs really break Nada Surf out of the sameyness of High/Low by introducing high notes! It really cracks through the grungy sound by including some contrast. However, it’s the next album, Let Go, that really shows Nada Surf taking off.
What’s so weird and awkward about talking about these records in this way is that looking back on the earlier ones with hindsight, its easy to see their flaws, and yet, if you could go back and revisit High/Low without the benefit of the later albums, I wonder if it would shine even brighter.
[READ: July 10, 2007] McSweeney’s #18.
After the utter weirdness of McSweeney’s #17, came this very calming volume. It is a simple paperback book, with a one color raised maze on the front. That’s it. This issue lets the stories take over, and it’s a nice change. (But a short lived one, once you check out #19). This volume also came with the first issue of Wholphin, the McSweeney’s produced DVD series, which I won’t be reviewing, except to say that the two or three videos I watched were really great, especially the one about Al Gore, and the one about the guy singing “Stairway to Heaven” backwards. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 