Something that screams good times and partying, but also can get people raging and headbanging. What the beaches of the world need is something sunshine-y, yet possessing some amount of iron-clad testicular fortitude. If it’s not a Jeep Explorer-driving wingnut blasting the latest dance-floor crud straight outta the Czech Republic, it’s someone cranking a playlist seemingly comprised solely of David Lee Roth’s “Just A Gigolo” and Nickelback’s “Something In Your Mouth,” or the homeless dude on the boardwalk playing Kenny Rogers’ “Lucille” on a two-string banjo. It’s always a shit-ton of fun! The only thing that blows about the beach is the traditional musical selections of its denizens. Man, who doesn’t love going to the beach? The sun, sand, surf, overprocessed fattening food, glistening bodies, shark attacks, irresponsible behavior that usually involves picking your stumbling drunk buddy off some crying kid’s sand castle. If the world’s gonna burn anyhow, we might as well dance on its ashes-and Nada Surf can be the house band. When Caws sings, “I cannot believe the future’s happening to me,” on Stars’ breathless final track, he sounds more relieved than terrified. ![]() Rarely has an album with such a heavy conscience sounded so utterly weightless. But even a scathing line like, “We signed up for extinction anyway, threw out our thinking caps and gave our minds away,” can’t kill the buzz at this pep rally. Listen closely, and it would appear that bandleader Matthew Caws is pretty miffed about our sputtering planet and its inhabitants’ various environmental excesses. Where 2008’s more experimental-and temperamental- Lucky got lost in its own head, The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy is an extrovert’s exercise in efficiency executed by a group (bolstered by former Guided By Voices guitarist Doug Gillard) that couldn’t be more locked in. Matthew FritchĢ4. Nada Surf | The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy (Barsuk)Īrriving in January like an eyebrow-searing whoosh from a power-pop blast furnace, Nada Surf’s sixth album of originals is its most single-minded and succinct yet. Few songwriters have ever painted Samson’s corner of the world so smartly. There’s actual thrills in Grand Theft Auto-playing grad-student anthem “When I Write My Master’s Thesis,” real pathos for the computer programmer in “Stop Error” and more than a little suspicion that “The Last And” is about star-crossed Simpsons characters Principal Skinner and Ms. ![]() He comes across as well-read, but not bookish sentimental, but not overly precious. ![]() With his laid-back lilt of a voice and the lessons learned from more than a decade spent in the parallel trenches of punk and folk rock, Samson aims squarely at his target audience of loners and library-science majors. It takes a thousand tiny pickaxes to break through the emotional permafrost up there, and Samson arrives fully prepared for the task. Samson writes about hockey, Icelandic sagas, the history of tuberculosis in Manitoba and the yawning stretches of tundra that revel in their obscure latitudes and geographical isolation. The subjects on the debut solo album by the frontman for Winnipeg’s the Weakerthans could double as source material for a compendium of hackneyed “You might be a Canadian if … ” jokes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |