"Nada Surf came out of New York City and got its foothold in 1996 with the intriguing, novelty single, “Popular.” It was from their first LP, High/Low¸ that reached #51 on the US charts. Mixing a slacker vibe, humour, and a not-quite-rap spoken word vocal, it was a good, original track for its time. I picked up the CD and listened to it a lot, pleased to find many solid, indie rock tunes such as, “The Plan.” After that, aside from a couple songs I had on compilations (“Hyperspace” and “Inside of Love”) over the next several years, I had little clue Nada Surf was a going concern until I saw a concert announcement for them in 2018."
"The opening track, “Earthquake,” opens with a plodding progression of electronic beats that mounts into a soothing line of arpeggiated guitar chords and electronic tones that creates the sensation of a steam locomotive slowly chugging out of the station and fading into the distance with a ribbon of steam and smoke trailing behind it. The second track, “Don’t Cry,” continues the train-journey theme with a pulsating drumbeat that transitions into the next track, “Revival,” the lyrics alluding to the resurrection of Jesus Christ along with the light, plinking banjo in the background. This creates a feeling of floating above the music at the beginning of the song. “I am saved, unscathed,” sings lead vocalist Bradford Cox, “and oh, could you believe it?”
"With Belle and Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell, he cut three albums that brilliantly inverted the paradigm set by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra decades earlier (“I write the songs and he’s the eye-candy,” Campbell told me. “Sometimes, we’ll be on stage, and he’s singing The Circus Is Leaving Town, and it sounds so sad, so true, I want to cry”). With longtime friend and kindred spirit Greg Dulli, he recorded a sublime album of soulful regret as the Gutter Twins. He worked alongside PJ Harvey and Slash, and undertook projects with lesser-known talents including Duke Garwood, Soulsavers and Joe Cardamone. His energy was fearsome, his approach fearless; his later albums embraced electronic music (2012’s Blues Funeral) and icy post-punk (2019’s Somebody’s Knocking), his final album, 2020’s Straight Songs of Sorrow, inspired by the experience of writing his memoir."