Nada Surf Moon Mirror LP

Moon Mirror, Nada Surf's 2024 record, has everything fans love and expect from them. Bittersweet anthems that begin quiet but explode into soaring harmonies? Check. Songs that are play-on-repeat heart punches? Check. Songs that are poetic and thought-provoking while also being absolute belt-at-the-top-of-your-voice-with-the-windows-down masterpieces? Check. It's all here.

For the past 30 years, Nada Surf has had the same core lineup: Matthew Caws, Daniel Lorca, and Ira Elliot. Moon Mirror, their first for New West Records, was produced by the band and Ian Laughton at Rockfield Studios in Wales. For the recording, Matthew, Daniel, and Ira were joined by their friend and longtime keyboard player Louie Lino.

Moon Mirror is a thrilling and moving leap forward for Nada Surf. The songs on the album are true to the human experience—as meaningful and mysterious and sometimes absurd as it is. There's love, yes, but also grief, deep loneliness, doubt, wonder, and hope. These are not the songs of a band in their 20s. There is hard-won wisdom here, and hard-won belief in possibility—the kind that comes from falling down and getting back up.

Nada Surf might be the most consistent band in indie rock, and they prove it again on Moon Mirror. At 11 tracks and a 44 minute-runtime, it's packed efficiently with all the things we expect from Nada Surf: propulsive rhythms, jangling guitars, gleaming melodies delivered via [Matthew] Caws' lithe tenor. Lyrically, he sounds like a man who, at age 57, has figured out that you never really figure things out in life—you just wander and wonder and hope. 'I'm always changing. You're getting burned. What kind of me has the next turn?' he sings in 'The One You Want,' the album's string-laden centerpiece. That kind of uncertainty pops up regularly throughout Moon Mirror, an album with a strummy, reflective title track that doubles as a plainspoken search for meaning and connection. Later, on 'Losing,' Caws sounds like a man who has lost not only love and time, but his sense of self. 'I am drifting. I'm a cloud. I am bending. I am bowed,' he sings as guitars squall in the background. 'I'm just static in the air dissipating and I don't care.' The undercurrent of sadness that courses through one of the prettiest songs on the album is striking—and so very Nada Surf.