You Guys Completely Ignored This A While Back

Everything before "Let Go" and "The Weight Is A Gift" was killed by their adolescent angst, which they fortunately through out with "Let Go." On both albums there are moments of simple brilliance , and at times they are mini-progressive (which is arguable).

The first track on Let Go, Blizzard of '77 provides nothing but a simple straight line of vocals and one acoustic guitar. With Blizzard of '77 you hear an energetic melancholy with an undercurrent of nostolgia. Normally you think nostalgia is provoked by fond memories, but in this song it is created through the mood of the perhaps perfectly unified music, and without having personal sentimental value. There is sentiment in the lyrics but you don't have to know them to pick any of this up. It is short and simple, but that only strengthens it in the end. What I mean is, Nada Surf accomplished more with less.

To touch on some of their mini-progressive side I mentioned, there is Fruit Fly[-Let Go], which lives up to this example as a concise sequence that starts at soft comtemplativeness, and elevates to agressive rhythm of the recently inserted electric guitar. Within this moment Mathew Caws' pristine and bittersweet vocals climb to the cold edges of space yet remain fuller than usual.

Comes a Time on The Weight is a Gift, is another melancholy song, but it's more contained. The vocals are cold and somber. The music is simple again, like Blizzard of '77, but more bodied, with a definite chorus, and more lengthy, with a slightly altered second half. Halfway through, on the line "Get up and tell the sun," a crying guitar enters to voice the overall melancholy of the song. The sorrow within the song is still the same, but it's voiced by the guitar as a release of feeling and a releif of tension. The result is morbidly uplifting.

Now I found these 3 songs to be good examples to never-heard-of-this-band people, but don't take them as some sort of the emo band through (althought they might have been once) this trio of starriness. they have an array of more upbeat songs as well which I would recomend. If you're interested check out "Let Go" and "The Weight is a Gift."