Nada Surf
Peaceful Ghosts
(Barsuk Records)
Since their inception in 1992, Nada Surf has been crafting sweet, mid-career indie rock. They didn’t get old before their time, per se. They found their seminal groove early on and have remained prolific there for the better part of two and a half decades.
On this Peaceful Ghosts, the band’s ninth record, a sort of career retrospective with an orchestra, we see one of the stalwarts of indie rock tuned down and transformed. The album was recorded while the band performed over the last summer with the ORF Radio Orchestra in Vienna, Austria and the Babelsberg Film Orchestra in Berlin, Germany. One almost forgets that they enlisted former GBV axe master Doug Gillard recently; instead they use horn flourishes and symbol crashes where there were guitars.
What Peaceful Ghosts is not is the document of Nada Surf as live act. More than a few times the production feels flat and almost contrived. The album isn’t warm with a live feeling nor is it properly studio mastered. There’s energy but it’s carried out almost entirely by the band’s peerless songwriting chops. Each song seems to cascade to its finish, wallow to a quick fade only to open up again. I also can’t help but feel as though the album would have been better with at least one of their classic, up tempo songs like “Waiting For Something” or “See These Bones” that would have stretched the use of the orchestra’s powers. Instead, aside from “Beautiful Beat” one of the best tracks from Lucky, the whole track list seems to dwell in a similar space from beginning to end.
Instead, Caws and his mates have chosen a few of the gentler songs from their catalog, displaying their flair for melodrama and lyrical acumen. Overall, when the songs are playing, the mood is sublime.What Peaceful Ghosts manages to capitalize on perfectly is every Nada Surf fan’s inner hunger nostalgia and personal historical reference, tracks such as “Blizzard of 77” and “Inside of Love” where Caws’ lyrical aplomb and characteristic, high pitched voice come through crystal clear. He’s a storyteller and these chosen songs are drawn for maximum affect, even better in places than the originals. Accessible, poetic lines like “A string needs some kite to catch some sky” from “Animal” is Caws at his finest and he’s never resonated quite so good as he does here.
Curious are the omissions on Peaceful Ghosts. While the band has traditionally eschewed their most identifiable song (and perhaps most damning) in “Popular” other classics are missing from this set, lending credence to disparate theories about the band. Is this Nada Surf moving to that elusive “different phase” more somber and cinematic, a museum installation piece more than four piece rocker? Or are they moving into that slow, dissociating orbit of their own careers where they return to the familiar well.
Neither sounds like Matthew Caws; he’s still striving. Even the title says something about advanced age, moving on, narrowing expectations though. Are we to believe the songs are Nada Surf’s peaceful ghosts, spirits past their life, in a place between?
Purchase Peaceful Ghosts here.
