Nada Surf: The Proximity Effect

Bands the world over should learn a lesson from the New York band Nada Surf: Beware the novelty hit. Sure, you can argue that a novelty hit is better than no hit at all, but Nada Surf's career has faced nothing but hardship since the left-field success of its 1996 song "Popular," in which singer Matthew Caws shouted passages from an antiquated guide to teenage popularity between oil-slick pop choruses. Not only did the remaining material on its underrated debut CD high/low fail to reach audiences—which is a shame, since the Ric Ocasek-produced album featured some of the most memorable pop-rock hooks this side of The Cars, or at least Weezer—but its follow-up, The Proximity Effect, got the band dropped from its major label weeks before its scheduled release. You live by the novelty song, you die by the lack of a novelty song, and without a surefire hit, the label clearly saw no reason to carry on. That's too bad given Nada Surf's track record, but The Proximity Effect doesn't exactly qualify as a lost treasure. It doesn't help that its planned single, the engagingly overdriven "Why Are You So Mean To Me," had to be pulled from the newly available, re-sequenced, self-released cut of the album, but not much stands out enough to warrant mention anyway. The clunky "Mother's Day" is a strident anti-rape anthem (as is the subtler and not coincidentally more effective "Robot"), while "Troublemaker" is representative of an irredeemably dull midsection. Near the album's close, "Slow Down" rekindles some of the fire of early tracks such as "Hyperspace," but by that point it's too late to manufacture much excitement. Nada Surf is clearly going for "maturity" on The Proximity Effect, and while that means refraining from novelty detritus, it also refrains from the simple pleasures of infectious pop songs. (Mardev Records, P.O. Box 220-157, Brooklyn, NY 11222)