Love Letter To A Record: Bob Evans On Nada Surf's 'Let Go'

Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.

In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.

Bob Evans – Nada Surf’s Let Go

Dearest Let Go,

Yes, I’m writing you a letter. Weird right? You are never far away from me and we’ve been close for 15 years now but here it is. I guess there’s never a bad time to put down in words the way we feel about one another.

I can remember exactly where I was the first time I heard about you. One of your children, ‘The Way You Wear Your Head’ was blasting through the speakers of my car radio as I drove down the long stretch of coastal road that links the city of Perth to it’s hip Southern neighbour Fremantle in Western Australia.

It was a typical Perth summers day, hovering around 30 degrees, the suffocating air still yet to be rinsed clean by the afternoon sea breeze. I had the windows down. I turned up the volume some more. “What is this song?”, I thought to myself. I didn’t recognise the voice at all, but it was sweet and melodic over an incessant, pounding rhythm that never stopped, like a speeding freight train in a hurry to reach it’s destination. The chorus exploded. The singer sounded desperate, despite that sweet tone. I held on til the back announce. It was your mother, Nada Surf! I knew that band, although I hadn’t heard of them in years. They had a massive hit in the 90’s called ‘Popular’, a song that by all rights I should have loved, but it never properly grabbed me. I felt like Weezer already did it better. Yet here I was, years later, roaring down the West Australian coast, the summer beach over my shoulder and very quickly falling in lust.

Fast-forward a short amount of time and I had you in my hands. Opening song ‘The Blizzard of ’77’ was unlike anything I’d really heard before, but immediately took me wistfully away. I’ve always loved albums that start with a quiet song, almost acting as an introduction to the rest of the album, suggesting themes that will be expanded upon throughout the course of the record. This is what records are made for after all, to be listened to in full, from start to finish! I kept on exploring.

‘Blonde on Blonde’ transported me to Manhattan. The singer sounds lonely. Next up, ‘Inside of Love’ pretty much confirms it. He’s alone and lost in the big city. These are songs of yearning and bittersweet melancholy written in the greatest city of them all, New York! I quickly realised, Let Go, that I was falling deeply in love with you. We had so much in common. It was like you knew me before we’d ever met, studied my soul and materialised in front of me like a sweet elixir, bringing comfort to my broken heart.

Fast forward a year later. We’re in the UK. I’d been before but this time I was there with my band playing shows. You were one of only a handful of records I listened to on those long, slow drives up and down the motor way. We found ourselves in Glasgow and walked down the main city street rugged up in jacket and scarf to protect ourselves from the bite of a Northern winter. There I was, a stranger in a strange town, almost alone, walking the streets, my heart full of melancholy and my head in a deep, reflective fog. We were far from the Perth summer heat of 12 months earlier, yet there you were, in my ears, shutting out the noise of the city.

I let myself go, as your title instructed and felt the full warmth of your embrace.

XXXBOBXXX

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Catch Bob Evans aka Jebediah frontman Kevin Mitchell touring around the nation across October and November, off the back of his freshly-released Best-Of album, ‘Full Circle’. Dates below!