BY ROXANA HADADI / PHOTOS BY ADAM FRIED

It's easy to enjoy Nada Surf. The band's alternative rock style is bouncy, energetic and fun. Their live show is bouncy, energetic and fun. And their fans ... well, OK, their fans aren't so hot. But what else can you expect from middle-aged yuppies desperately clinging to some semblance of past youth?

Regardless of the almost sold-out crowd's douche-tastic behavior - such as a tendency to pop their collars and throw back bizarrely bright mixed drinks, as well their overwhelmingly tall height (did these people's DNA all idolize Larry Bird or something?) - the show itself certainly made up for it.

Since 1992, Nada Surf has been making catchy, pop-influenced tracks over a course of six albums, with their latest, "If I Had a Hi-Fi," being a collection of covers and only available during the band's tour. But while the group flirted with mainstream success in 1996 with their hit song "Popular," that period of their history - you know, the one with a supposedly homoerotic video and MTV coverage and rabid French fans - was pretty nonexistent at their performance at the 9:30 Club on Friday, April 2. Nada Surf didn't play that track, but instead picked a variety of songs from their other albums, with offerings from 2000's "The Proximity Effect," 2003's "Let Go," 2005's "The Weight is a Gift," 2008's "Lucky" and "If I Had a Hi-Fi."

And the rabidly excited, awkwardly dancing, repetitively fist-pumping crowd loved every second of it. (I wish that was a joke, but alas.)

Things started off with "Weightless" from "Lucky," an immediate introduction into Nada Surf's infectious little world. Over a huge swell of applause, lead singer Matthew Caws launched into the song about muddled realities: "That is a dream, it is what it seems," he sang, while following it up later with a kind of rock-and-roll wisdom - "Behind every desire is another one/ Waiting to be liberated/ When the first one's sated." You may call it a cautionary tale against hedonism, but the drinking, rocking-out crowd paid that no notice. Instead, they kept the energy at a constant high, jumping up and down haphazardly and falling all over each other in glee. The happiest crowd in Washington, D.C., that night? Possibly.

That infectious mood continued to build over the course of the night, too, as Caws and co. dug into their catalogue and played more of their sonorous, contagious songs. Next came "Hyperspace" from "The Proximity Effect," another advice-spreading track ("There's no right and there's no wrong/ There's just the balance of the things you know") that pleasantly whirled and swirled into a crashing, droning flood of sound; the somewhat existentialist "Happy Kid" from "Let Go," which described the trials and tribulations of being "stuck with the heart of an old punk" and "drowning in my id"; and the fantastic "Whose Authority" from "Lucky," a definite crowd favorite that was effortlessly listenable and delightfully fizzy. Though the song sounds like a slice of ‘90s nostalgia, it's only from two years ago - is there hope for alternative rock yet?

Well, probably. For proof, see the lilting harmonies of "I Like What You Say," the complex instrumentation of "Killian's Red" (which started cloudy and wandering, but then measured into a pointed and relatable love song, with lyrics like, "We'll go on vacation tonight/ Under a sea of neon light/ And I almost love this town/ When I'm by your side") and the unabashedly melancholy-yet-romantic "Your Legs Grow" (with achingly honest lines including, "There was no fear in my room when we got close"), which reached ballad status when the lights went out and a single glow was cast upon Caws. Oh, to be idolized.

Yet for Caws that night, there was good reason. Whether he was leading the band through their own tracks or covers from "If I Had a Hi-Fi" - including "Electrocution" by Bill Fox and a sped-up version of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" that Caws introduced by calling it a "Goth-disco song - it's the only kind of disco, really" - or bantering with the audience about his relationship with his father, a philosophy professor at George Washington University ("He's always been proud; it's just when I got health insurance he stopped being worried," Caws said of his father's reaction to his rock ‘n' roll career choice), the man held the crowd in the palm of his hand. For one night, being "Popular" really didn't matter that much - Nada Surf was bigger, and way better, than all that.