Weight Is a Gift

The follow-up to 2003's masterpiece, "Let Go", is a perfect pop album sure to alleviate the growing breathless anticipation among long-term fans and recent converts. It carries on the contemplative tone that characterized much of "Let Go" with tracks of heartrending beauty, introspection, wit, and often deceptively dark lyrics, while also displaying the band's penchant for pure pop melody. Produced by Chris Walla (Death Cab For Cutie, The Decemberists, The Thermals).

Produced with Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla, The Weight is a Gift is a less elliptical musical offering than Let Go. Just as that 2003 recording put Nada Surf back on the map, after several years stuck in post-major label limbo, their fourth full-length proves its success was no fluke. As before, singer/guitarist Matthew Caws is as much lovesick dreamer as pop culture junkie. Last time around, he was extolling the pleasures of Blonde on Blonde, now it's Paris, Texas ("Comes a Time") and "Lenny Bruce's Bug Eyes" ("Imaginary Friends"). Ultimately though, it's the more emotionally direct material that leaves the biggest impression, like "Your Legs Grow" and "Always Love" (the only song that sounds a little like Death Cab). The one exception would be the fuzzed-out, but still poppy "The Blankest Year," which deviates into darker territory, like the Hollies covering Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life." --Kathleen C. Fennessy