The Weight Is a Gift

The Weight Is a Gift
Studio album by Nada Surf
Released September 20, 2005
Recorded 2005
Genre Rock
Length 44:17
Label Barsuk
Producer Chris Walla, Louie Lino, Nada Surf
Professional reviews

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Nada Surf chronology
Let Go
(2002)		 The Weight Is a Gift
(2005)		 Lucky
(2008)

The Weight Is a Gift is Nada Surf's fourth full-length album. It was produced by Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla and mixed by Geoff Sanoff. It was released in 2005 and features vocals from the Long Winters frontman John Roderick. According to a blurb on NPR's All Songs Considered, the band says the album "answers questions of lust and deception, greed and love, joy and regret and the rites of passage you weren't quite ready to pass through." [1]

Contents

Background

In a 2007 interview, Matthew Caws explained the imagery in the song "Your Legs Grow" saying:

When a challenge presents itself to you, it is so easy to have a kind of panicky feeling where you think, 'Oh my god – if that happened to me, I would die. If I have to stay in this job I’ll die, or if I lose that person, I’ll die.' And once in a while, those things you think will kill you happen. You know, someone breaks up with you, or one of your parents gets really sick or something. But you make it through anything, really. And the image that was in my mind was that if you were out at sea, and you were freezing and thought you were going to drown – somehow we have the capacity to get over anything and the image that I had in mind was that your legs would just grow down to the bottom and you’d walk out. We are capable of rescuing ourselves. I was holding onto that thought or being hopeful about it, since I was going through a hard time in a relationship.
—Matthew Caws[2]

Track listing

  1. "Concrete Bed" – 2:29
  2. "Do It Again" – 3:39
  3. "Always Love" – 3:18
  4. "What Is Your Secret?" – 3:26
  5. "Your Legs Grow" – 4:00
  6. "All Is a Game" – 3:26
  7. "Blankest Year" – 2:12
  8. "Comes a Time" – 4:58
  9. "In the Mirror" – 3:41
  10. "Armies Walk" – 3:28
  11. "Imaginary Friends" – 9:40

Bonus disc

Many albums included a four-track bonus disc.

  1. "From the Rooftop Down" – 2:44
  2. "Fools" – 2:54
  3. "Concrete Bed (Original Version)" – 2:10
  4. "Au fond d'un rêve doré" – 2:05

References

  1. ^ "Franz Ferdinand, Wolf Parade, Nada Surf". NPR music. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15965224&ps=rs. Retrieved 24 September 2011. 
  2. ^ Henderson, Steve. "Nada Surf - 10.16.07". absolutepunk.net. http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=274892. Retrieved 24 September 2011.