Nada Surf

Lucky, the title of Nada Surf's fifth album, is at once literal and ironic. Like the songs that singer-guitarist Matthew Caws, bassist Daniel Lorca and drummer Ira Elliot crafted for their previous two albums, Let Go (2003) and The Weight Is A Gift (2005), Lucky is filled with images of restlessness, longing and the elusiveness of love. Yet the band counterbalances the lyrical bittersweetness with a musical buoyancy. Intimate songs become in-it-together anthems, thanks to the chiming guitars, propulsive rhythms, and the emotional candor in Caws' vocals. A song like "Beautiful Beat" segues from a sparsely arranged, confessional first verse into a harmony-laden chorus and reaches multi-layered, canon-like proportions before the track fades out. If Caws is often suggesting that romance and resolution may still be an inch or two out of reach, he's also proffering immediate musical solace. Turn up the volume, hit the repeat button, and your troubles, for a blissful three minutes or so, will disappear.

We have the limited-edition double CD version — we recently found a box of them mixed in with some of the regular (single-CD) version. The extra disc, originally available with the first pressing of the CD, has 4 bonus tracks, "Whose Authority (acoustic)", "I Like What You Say (acoustic)", "I Wanna Take You Home" (featuring Juliana Hatfield on vocals), and "Everyone's On Tour".