Nada Surf separated by an ocean
Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2008
Nada Surf is one of those bands that transcends rehearsing regularly. Known as a “power pop” trio, the band just gets together to play before making a record, especially since one-third of the band lives in Vienna. The one in Austria.
Singer / guitarist Matthew Caws and drummer Ira Elliot live in New York, while the bassist, Daniel Lorca, lives across the Atlantic.
“Back when we had our first band, life was cheaper,” Caws jokes. “We’d pile into a taxi and go to a cheap place once a week to play. It’s not as easy now.”
Maybe not as easy, but Nada Surf is still feeling lucky. So the band named its latest, and fifth, album Lucky.
“I just thought that would be an appropriate name,” Caws says. “I had been going through a tumultuous time in my life. I’m a single dad and I had fallen in love and was feeling all right, as opposed to not so good, and I had thought that if I am prepared to put out a positive record, since some of these songs have pleasant endings, then why not ?
“ It was sort of like watching the results after the election.”
Lucky was released Feb. 5 by Barsuk Records, but it also will be part of a special boxed set of vinyl versions of all five Nada Surf albums — High / Low, The Proximity Effect, Let Go, The Weight Is a Gift and Lucky — which will be released Tuesday, coincidentally the date of the group’s central Arkansas show at Juanita’s. The set will also include a re-pressing of the band’s first 7-inch single, a full-color 24-page lyric and photo book and download codes for MP 3 versions of the albums and a collection of rare and out-of-print bonus tracks and B-sides.
Caws prefers the sound of records and thinks that more and more of the band’s fans are finding their way to a similar philosophy of listening.
“After so many years of listening to MP 3 s, I’ve just about had it,” Caws explains. “They’re just not very good, especially when you turn them up. We’re much more intelligent than we know, and you can tell the difference. Eventually, I think a lot of young people will get their minds blown when they listen to their uncle’s old Led Zeppelin records or whatever.”
Just as exciting for the band was a recent contest they held to select a video for their song “Weightless” on the Lucky album. Caws figures they saw at least 60 entries, some of which can be viewed at the band’s site, www. myspace. com / nadasurf.
Caws considers the contest a logical thing to do for a band that prefers to keep itself out of the videos and let other images attach themselves to the songs.
“Every time we play the song live now, scenes from so many of them play through my mind,” Caws wrote in a letter he posted thanking the band’s fans for their submissions. “We spent many [happy ] hours all watching them together backstage and it was really difficult, and heartbreaking, to make a choice.”
Nada Surf has no problem with being tagged “power pop,” Caws says.
“If we do something new or different, I guess it will be by accident or design,” he says. “I was reading a Cheap Trick review this morning, and I guess they would be called the poster children of power pop. My first instinct is always to think of something catchy when I’m writing a song, but I know sometimes I think what we’re doing is loud folk music.”
Formed in 1992, Nada Surf was founded by Caws and Lorca, with Elliot, the former drummer of The Fuzztones, joining in 1995. The band first connected with a wide audience when its song “Popular” became a summer anthem in 1996. The song, except for the chorus, uses spoken word interpretations of the advice from Penny’s Guide to Teen-Age Charm and Popularity, a book written in 1964.
Nada Surf has found a ready reception in the world of TV and movies, which have used Nada Surf songs on many a soundtrack and episode.
Even advertisers recognize the power of a good power pop band. A Chase credit card TV ad used Nada Surf’s version of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.”
Music Nada Surf Opening acts: Delta Spirit, Jealous Girlfriends 8 p. m. Tuesday, Juanita’s, 13 th and Main streets, Little Rock Tickets: $ 13 advance, $ 15 day of show; open to those age 18 and over (501 ) 374-3271
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