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Tyler: Travis, people know Nada Surf for their mid-‘90s MTV mainstay “Popular,” a lurching spoken-word condemnation of high school and all its stratified barbarism.  Fun stuff!  The video was memorable—and flirted with homoeroticism at the end, a brave move for the era—and the hook was catchy.  That was that.

Travis: I remember said video and song. Blurred-out wieners in a locker room shower.

That song was my only musical knowledge of Nada Surf before we decided on this album, though I did notice their name cropping up in mainstream music magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin with positive reviews for their albums in the 2000s. The sentiment seemed to be, “These guys are actually pretty good for a 90s alt-rock one-hit wonder!”

Tyler: My first exposure to non-“Popular” Nada Surf was the song “Blizzard of ’77,” the Goddam lovely little thing that opens up their 2002 album Let Go.  It’s this hushed strum of melancholy, and I took to it when I found it at the college radio station where I spent two semesters not getting listeners.

I didn’t actually own Let Go, though, so my first full post-one-hit-wonder album experience with Nada Surf was the album we’re here to discuss tonight.

Oh, back in the days where you had to actually own, or in the least download, an album.

Travis: The album we are discussing tonight being 2013’s The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy.

Tyler: I found it at the very nice library in STL’s Central West End.  Based solely on my love of “Blizzard Of ’77,” I picked it up and gave it a shot.

Travis: Gonna be real with you here. I have ignored Nada Surf over the years. I thought “Popular” was pretty cute and clever at the time, but the reviews their 2000s albums got, plus the fact that they were on Barsuk Records, home to Death Cab for Cutie, the Long Winters, and plenty of other beige-sounding indie rock bands that are very much Not For Me, made me figure that these guys were probably fine but not my thing. I think I read a review of one of those albums in Blender, if you remember that very 2002 music mag sold on stands by its Maxim association and cheesecakey cover photos of, like, Mandy Moore and Paulina Rubio.

Tyler: Fucking Blender.

Also, you’re hardly to be condemned for blowing off a one-hit-wonder, from the ‘90s or any era.

Hell, it makes it all the more a pleasant surprise when you stumble across one that has become—or revealed themselves to be—something special.

Travis: I don’t know if they are, as a whole, special, as I still haven’t explored beyond this one record, but I will say that were I writing a capsule review for Blender, Spin, or any other defunct music magazine who tried to sell me on The Vines, I would call The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy “A taut slab of guitar-forward indie rock.”

Tyler: Ah, “taut.”  A perfectly appropriate word in describing this album, as well as the piano accompaniment to the movie The Firm.

Travis: Can put that on the sticker on the front of the CD. “…a taut slab of guitar-forward indie rock.” — 4/5, Spinder

Tyler: It really doesn’t lag, though, does it?

It slows the pace for half of one track, “When I Was Young.”  The rest is at least midtempo.

Travis: No, it’s a well-paced album. Ten tracks in less than forty minutes, and I liked eight of them. That’s a really good hit rate for any album, much less one by a band who are possibly sometimes mistaken for Semisonic or Primitive Radio Gods.

Tyler: Raise it up for Fastball!

Travis: I would make jokes about Gin Blossoms and Sponge, but to be real again, those bands actually had bangers. And, incidentally, this album reminds me of both.

It also reminds me of the criminally no-hit wonders of Material Issue, who probably should have gotten at least one of Gin Blossoms’ gold records.

Tyler: It’s just damn good music, it’s pleasant, which doesn’t sound very badass, but that and earnestness are this band’s stock-in-trade.

I took to this upon first listen, and it’s become a real go-to in the years since.  It’s consistent.

Travis: There are a lot of ways to play spot-the-influence with this. Like any power-pop band worth their salt, they probably mainlined the Beatles and Cheap Trick, and I also note some “Byrds-y jangle”. They also remind me of a band that THEY very possibly influenced, Jimmy Eat World, not least because the singers sound very similar. That being said, this isn’t just a paint-by-numbers alt-rock album. There is some seriously clever songwriting, interesting playing, and there are earworm hooks all over this bad boy.

Tyler: “Clear Eye Clouded Mind,” the opening track: also the best?  Probably no need to rank, but it’s a damn ripping way to rope you in.

Travis: And when I say “clever” I don’t necessarily mean the lyrics, though there are some nice turns of phrase. “Clever” in that songs that seem simple at first reward repeat listens. The song you reference does just that. It’s really complex for a four-minute rock song, with a number of different refrains and verse, chorus, and bridge structures. It also rocks and is catchy as hell and makes the album title, which could be precious in the wrong hands, sound awesome when sung.

“Clear Eye” is also my favorite on the album, by a pretty big measure. That’s not to say the rest of the album doesn’t measure up, it’s just a damn good opener.

Tyler: Thoughts on that lone half-ballad, “When I Was Young?”

Travis: Oh it’s ass, it’s one of the two songs I really don’t like.

Tyler: Ha!  Oh, I love it.

Travis: “The professor and Maryann….”

It is the song that most reminded me of Fountains of Wayne, and we have previously agreed to disagree about their merits.

Tyler: Very fair.  What’s your other thumbs-down?

Travis: “Let the Fight Do the Fighting.” More of what I was expecting from a Barsuk band. Twee Starbucks music for grad students.

I was greatly anticipating hating a song called “Teenage Dreams” by a band in their 40s (50s?), but actually it is dope and defied my expectations. I thought it’d be some teenage rock and roll cosplay along the lines of Beach Slang, Japandroids, or any other number of embarrassing rock critic catnip bands.

It is, however, not Steven Hyden music.

Tyler: It’s dope, is what it is.  I love “Teenage Dreams.”

It is one of those tracks that made me wonder about where you were gonna land on this one.  I dig “Moved to a tear by the subway breakdancer,” but I thought it might be too NYC-reference for you.

Travis: “Moved to a tear by the subway breakdancer” works in the context of the rest of the song. Specific NYC references do not bother me.

When listening to “Jules and Jim” I was wondering why it was not about a French kid who winds up in reform school because his mom is a tramp who doesn’t care about him, and then I remembered I was thinking of the wrong Truffaut film. Anyway, that song is also good.

Tyler: I’m a big fan of “Looking Through.”

Travis: Yes, “Looking Through” is enjoyable guitar rock with some nice forward momentum.

Tyler: A neat description of the album overall.

Any other standouts you’d like to highlight?

Travis: I’d call out “The Moon is Calling” for being the most “oughts indie-rock” sounding song on the album, but it is both pretty and driving and good.

Though they sound nothing alike, something about Nada Surf reminded me of this band called Traindodge. Traindodge is a band I have seen play in small venues for almost twenty years. They often played with longtime best-band-in-St.-Louis Riddle of Steel. Long after Riddle of Steel broke up, I saw an ad that Traindodge was again coming through town to play some 200 cap venue. They’re lifers. And it seems like Nada Surf are too, if that makes any sense.

There’s something comforting and heartwarming about the fact that come hell or high water, Traindodge is still out there doing it.

Tyler: You’re spot-on.  “Popular” dropped in ’96.  Twenty-four years later, Nada Surf released an excellent album called Never Not Together, another in a sequence of very capable LPs.  That makes me happy.

Travis: I feel like beyond saying “this song is also good” I don’t have much else of note to say about Nada Surf. I take it you’d recommend Never Not Together for someone who liked this one (like me)? Any other albums of theirs or anyone similar you’d recommend as further listening?

Tyler: Never Not Together is great, though you may or may not stumble over the spoken-word stream-of-consciousness track—even as you’d certainly concede that it sounds good.

I’m also a big fan of a live 2-LP they recorded with the Babelsberg Film Orchestra, a very cozy album that I found at Everybody’s in Cincinnati for a steal of a ten-dollar offer. It’s called Peaceful Ghosts.

You Know Who You Are, another release that I really like.  I’m slowly but surely moseying my way through their catalog, but I keep coming back to …Astronomy.

I do have to share something that may invert your entire opinion of the band and its frontman/songwriter Matthew Caws.

Travis: Okay, bring it.

Tyler: He and his wife were featured in one of those New York Times tales-of-marriage articles.  This was a few years back.

Travis: Thankfully I never have to read that. That might Caws me to start disliking this album, which I’d rather not do.

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