Issue #39 - Best of 2011Nada Surf
The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy
Barsuk
Jan 27, 2012 Issue #39 - Best of 2011
In the midst of everything, a heart-in-mouth Matthew Caws proclaims “it’s never too late for teenaged dreams!” This comes on the sixth track of Nada Surf’s seventh studio album, which marks the band’s entry into a third decade of existence (they formed in 1992). You could argue that the former malcontent, scruffy trio have spent an entire career not giving up in teenaged dreams. With ’90s guitar-jangle nostalgia at an all time high and everyone from Pavement to Suede getting entering a secondhand renaissance, Nada Surf can walk with clout knowing that they were releasing records even when they were remediated as tired artifacts.
The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy sounds and feels like most Nada Surf albums do—shimmering, mid-tempo guitars clashing with knee-buckled notebook poetry. Caws has been clinging to the feeling of being fresh, raw, young, and overwhelmed with the world for a songwriting career, forever infatuated with the unfamiliar pangs of emotion when you don’t have the life experience to put it into context. On the deliberate “When I Was Young” he sings about “the world he was dreaming of” before maturity took its toll, which might very well be self-commentary.
The Stars Are Indifferent certainly isn’t out to prove anything, the people interested in listening to a new Nada Surf record remain the same demographic who wanted to listen to 2010’s If I Had a Hi-Fi, or 1998’s The Proximity Effect. That might be reductive, but that’s exactly what an album like The Stars Are Indifferent sets out to be—arranging 10 fairly decent Nada Surf-sounding songs in a row. Considering the content and the sonic touchstones, these tracks could be a decade old for all we know. Some products of the ’90s spiraled out in aimless integration, some called it a day early and reaped reissue profits, Nada Surf simply made music. We ought to be glad. (www.nadasurf.com)
Author rating: 6/10
Average reader rating: 8/10
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February 13th 2012
5:26pm
Hey check out (and like) an awesome article of New Rock Music that has been Recently Released, featuring Nada Surf’s “The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy” by one of the contributors of Culture Catch Mr. Holtje at: http://culturecatch.com/music/kathleen-edwards-nada-surf-van-halen-sharon-van-etten
February 16th 2012
10:15am
LOVE that title. Stars are indifferent to astronomy… that’s a principle to live by!