When Otto's snowboard gets mangled before a competition, a smooth-talking, two-faced Sno-mart representative offers Otto a corporate sponsorship and persuades him to become a sellout.Īfter being challenged by Lars, the Rocket gang sneak out of their homes at midnight to meet him for a street hockey game. Twister's girly-girl cousin, Clio, goes along with the gang to Winterfest for their respective ice competitions, but both she and Reggie are at each other's throats about which competition is better. When Ocean Shores is flooded with shoobies, Raymundo permits Otto and Reggie to take Twister and Sam to his secret Surf Spot. Story by : Michael Bloom & Andy McElfresh When the Stimpletons leave town for a while, Reggie is entrusted to look after and take care of their pool while they're gone. Teleplay by : Michael Bloom & Andy McElfresh Sam has to learn to find his place in the Rocket gang when he moves to Ocean Shores from Kansas after his parents' divorce. It was produced in 1998, but never aired. This is the pilot episode used to sell the show. Reviewer Benjamin C.Unaired (produced in 1998) ( Unaired (produced in 1998)) A pared-down version of the album with three or four fewer songs wouldn’t have been so bad. The album closes with a mediocre lullaby about love and dying, which emphasizes the cello even more, but fails to hold the listener’s attention. “The Fox” manages to convey a sense of foreboding thanks in part to the haunting cello, which is quite a relief after so much uniform distortion. Sparse drumbeats and a wandering bass line make for a very original interplay with a vibratto-heavy guitar (think “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” but less cheesy). One final highlight, “The Fox,” doesn’t blend into the monotony. But Nada Surf’s music tends to concentrate on melody more than poetry, so they think they can get away with it. Caws sounds as if he took a casual conversation with a bunch of guys and stuffed it into a musical format. The words sometimes don’t fit quite right, occasionally splitting sentences across lines. Throughout “Lucky,” Matthew Caws’ lyrics are often awkward. If it weren’t for the broken-record of a chorus, which just repeats “I like what you say” in different orders, this could be a great single. At least this gives bassist Daniel Lorca, who weirdly resembles Kevin Spacey in a dreadlock wig, a lot of room for an interesting bass line. It’s only followed by “I Like What You Say,” the album’s first single, which uses the same acoustic E chord for the entire song. “Are You Lightning,” the next track, is very long and sleepy. Subsequent songs channel Simon and Garfunkel (“Here Goes Something”) or try to mix things up with a 6/4 time signature (“Weightless”), but they end up just being tiring. Then “Lucky” moves on to the filler tracks. In “Beautiful Beat” we see an example of repetition used well, a rarity on this album. The instrumentation, which includes a touch of strings here and there, helps this euphoric feeling along. The emphasis is once again on Caws’ milky tenor, and with lyrics like “Beautiful beat, lift me up from distress” the song sounds like meditation set to rock music. “Beautiful Beat” is a sunny-day anthem layered with an acoustic center and a solid drum cadence which focuses on dramatic toms in the verses. The third track happens to be the high point of the album. While Nada Surf usually uses their guitar tones in novel ways, the three minutes of steady pseudo-country on “Whose Authority” portend the monotony to come. “Whose Authority,” the second song on “Lucky,” sounds good at first, but gets repetitive by the second chorus. The double-time chorus isn’t as magnetic as these groovy verses, but the song does seamlessly switch from minor to major as it moves to a multilayered climax. One of the three or so songs which manages to stand out is the opening number, “See These Bones.” A ringing guitar part and frontman Matthew Caws’ bright, clear voice start the album off on a melancholy tone that’s backed up by heavy bass and a perfect broken-down drum pattern. The alt-rock trio lays down eleven solid tracks, but “Lucky” isn’t particularly special coming from a band which has produced fantastic material in the past. Nada Surf was once as “Popular” as their aptly titled angsty nineties hit, but they’ll need to be more than “Lucky,” their hopefully-titled fifth studio album, to shoot back to the top of the charts.
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