Apr 29, 2014
Another example of why you should experience Nada Surf
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Another example of why you should experience Nada Surf
Been thinking about music writing and R.E.M. and everything, yes, but also been a lil busy lately and tired. What is going on with this weather? I don't know. Still feeling trapped indoors. Right when you think it's over, it's 0 degrees again. Or it snows again. I'm never able to get out in the sunlight. I've been dreaming of spring. Dreaming.
Oh, how I have been dreaming. Spring and summertime. Summer gets rough in Chicago, really REALLY hot and humid and sweaty and terrible and impossible to deal with if you don't have AC. But I would prefer it to now, because at least you could go inside and absorb sunlight and live your life and feel good. Feel nature. In this kind of winter you can't feel much of anything except tired and depressed. Going outside feels like walking down a dark, dirty shitty hallway over and over again. One you can't leave. Not fun! I've gotta say I don't like it
I know it will be over soon but I'm getting impatient. I feel like such a whiner writing this. I'm reading the 33 1/3 for Murmur and getting some lil insights. It's not bad so far. Trying to keep myself active brain-wise while the rest of my body is tired of cold weather. I honestly had no idea a winter could get this rough, so this is a learning experience for me. I'm learning to cope with terrible winter one step at a time.
I'll be writing more about R.E.M., of course, plus other things. Personal writing. Of course. Jeez, I never thought weather was going to affect me like this. I had this dumb feeling that the cold would peter off by the end of January but of course I was wrong. How much longer will it last? Another week? Another month?
I don't know. I don't know how much more winter my body can take. It will be fun to find out!
Here's this song, "Whose Authority" by Nada Surf. One of my absolute favorite songs of all time. I am not listening to it right now, and I refuse to listen to it until the first day of spring. Until the weather gets better. I refuse to expose a song this hopeful, this luminescent, this natural and joyously free, to this horrible shit-dog cold. It doesn't deserve it. "Whose Authority"'s opening guitar chords deserve to be a victorious call at the end of a terrible ordeal, the sound of good times to come. The sound of something green and beautiful and warm. Not the sound of winter, all this dead brown snow around me. This song is better than all that.
You can listen to it. In fact, IÂ encourage you to. I won't. I refuse.
But I'll tell you how desperate I'm getting: my girlfriend put Lucky on shuffle in her room, and before I walked back in with a glass of water I could hear this song playing through the closed door. I would not let myself into the room until the song was over. I just stood there, cold drink in hand, leaning slack against the wall next to the door. Listening. Barely hearing those warm guitar chords, those lovely harmonies. Fantasizing. It felt so distant, the warmth this song conveyed. It felt like I was hearing a transmission from another planet, another universe. That's how far away spring feels right now.
It's intense. Am I getting desperate for warm weather? I am getting desperate for warm weather. For now, it's cold and shitty and I'm going to keep listening to R.E.M. and the Beta Band and writing in this fun silly tumblr until it's over. And when it is, I will play "Whose Authority" again, and I will be so happy I did. It'll be the end of the end.
Gosh, I'm lying under three layers of sheets and I'm STILL cold, wowzers. Listen to a Nada Surf album everyone
I walk like you guide me, my eyes Are shut like I'm blind Turn to you and listening and tryin' To be in your mind There's a feeling that I get When I look to the west 'Bout having all the answers Still failing the test Wolf packs and convoys and Captains and men Surprised in translation World without end Welcome back to real life The picture is gone Put a contract out on things that go on and on How do you stay where You most want to be? Where'd you get the patience Did it come easily? ahhhhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhhh On whose authority I have none over me
On whose authority There's none that I can see On whose authority I have none over me On whose authority No one speaks to me On whose authority I have none over me ... ahhhhhhh All the tales with paper heroes The ones who dyed the sun And called it yellow The ones who made you run On whose authority I have none over me On whose authority There's none that I can see On whose authority I have none over me On whose authority None that' speaks to me On whose authority I have none over me ... ahhhhhhh
Nada Surf - Whose Authority
#estizene illetve #gpoy (vagy #gvoy?)
Nada Surf - Lucky
Yes, this is another favorite album. I'm trying to make good here. Too many records I've been listening to for years and years that I've NEVER written about, not even once. This is one of them. I've enjoyed this record for a solid five-plus years and never wrote a single fuckin thing about it. Not one word. Not even out loud! To my friends!
I'm sorry, Nada Surf. I owe you one.
There's that tentative feeling that held me back. I found myself listening to Lucky all the time but felt like Nada Surf were too outside my wheelhouse and ahh, I didn't wanna talk about em. I thought maybe people thought they were lame soft rock Death Cab sorts of dudes. Which they kinda are. How to explain this! Why did this worry me so much! I love Lucky. I should have put it in my top 25 albums from a few years back and I didn't and that was dishonest.
What am I so worried about! Think of all the Lucky-loving friends I coulda made over the past five years! Instead of the dopey XTC-loving friends I have now!! Yeesh. My heart was cold and weak. Nothing.
Nada Surf and Lucky came to me cuz Mike Maronna, aka Big Pete in The Adventures of Pete & Pete, made an appearance in the music video for single "Whose Authority" as a bike courier. It's a lovely video and I will always imagine that bike courier Mike is actually thirtysomething Big Pete circa 2008 'cause it's fun to think about, but there's something about that song that still moves right through me - those punchy comfy guitars, Matt Caws' confident nice guy vocals, those lovely background harmonies. Almost aggressively welcoming and sweet. I feel immediately at ease every time I hear it. It's like magic!
That's Lucky, and that's modern day Nada Surf, a group of dudes that made their mark as Weezer nerd-rock pushers with 1996's "Popular" only to spend the rest of their career making the prettiest guitar pop music of its kind. It's the kind of stuff that fits right in with the quiet, reflective modern rock atmosphere of the mid-2000s, sharing the spotlight with Coldplay and Death Cab and the Fray and all those bearded thirtysomething sleepfriends. But Nada Surf were always the sweetest and least maudlin of all those guys.
Matt Caws was 41 when this record came out. I had no idea the guy was that old! He sounds young! He sounds like he's 21. Man, the dude is 45 now. At this rate he's gonna sound 21 forever. That's something special, isn't it?
I love every song on this record. Pretty layered guitars and sweet vocals and it's so quiet. It's warm weather music. Spring is here, you see. Wait for a warm night and go outside to watch the sunset and put this record on. It's a good fit, friend. "Are You Lightning" - that's a nice walk outside. That relaxing lil melody that turns into that big lovely coda outta nowhere. Simple pleasures.
You know - it's music that makes me feel like I'm home. How can I explain that? It does. I always imagine myself sitting around the street I grew up on with stars twinklin over my head. It's immediate. How does that happen, with music I didn't grow up with? How does the human brain work. I'm still trying to understand this.
You can tell these guys are older. It's a sweet warm album but there's a sadness, deep in there. Loneliness. Caution. I think that's what stops it from being too sugary cute sweet. There's weariness here. The record starts with "See These Bones" - "Look alive, see these bones / What you are now, we were once / And just like we are, you'll be dust." They're old sad wise men. They've seen it all. They've fought through the mad soul-sucking 90s corporate rock machine and made it out alive with all their prettiest melodies intact. And they're here to share them with you! They're yours!
What a great friend Lucky has been to me. From dumb college years through weird lonely post-college confusion through strange new Chicago stuff. It's one of the only records I want to hear when it gets warm outside. I can't imagine a more comforting record. This is a friendship that I hope continues.
Since I'm on the topic of 90s nostalgia...anyone look familiar in this Nada Surf video?
Welcome back to real life the picture is gone. Put a contract out on things that go on and on. How do you stay where you most want to be? Where'd you get the patience? Did it come easily?
Nada Surf - Whose Authority
