, which was produced by the Cars’ Ric Ocasek), the irony for New York-based trio of Matthew Caws (vocals and guitars), Daniel Lorca (bass/vocals), and Ira Elliot (drums/vocals)—who are still going strong 16 years later—is that it has also been their biggest to date. “Popular” reached No. 11 on Billboard’s Modern Rock charts, but the band never quite achieved big mainstream success with its follow-up efforts. But when you consider the tune’s sardonic tear down of the whole concept of coolness, that failure to ignite big-time might not seem like such a surprise after all. But it gets even more ironic.
, Elektra Records didn’t think it was commercial enough and told them to record a few cover songs and/or an acoustic version of “Popular” to release as singles. In the spirit of their breakthrough song, Caws and company declined—they felt the album was just fine as-is. Elektra responded by dropping the band after the album’s European release—right in the middle of the subsequent tour.
One gets the feeling the label still regrets that decision, though, because Nada Surf came into its own during that period: Though fickle fate hasn’t since struck with the same fortuitous (and financially rewarding) timing that it did with “Popular, ” Caws, Lorca, and Elliot have since perfected their power-pop hooks, delectable multi-harmony background vocals, and dynamic guitar layering approach in a way that could’ve been exploited to great effect by a major label.
Guild Sighting: Matthew Caws Of Nada Surf Wielding A Vintage Guild Archtop
, Nada Surf proves the intervening years have only made their infectious songwriting more potent. Chock-full of radio-ready choruses augmented with cranked, harmonically rich power chords and crystalline acoustic textures,
Builds on Surf’s successful approach by bringing in former Guided by Voices guitarist Doug Gillard to act as a creative foil to Caws’ ’68 Les Paul-powered foundations.
In our recent interview, Caws proved anything but indifferent to his craft, going into great detail about his love for his Marshall JCM800 and his collection of low-powered vintage amps, as well as his painstaking songwriting process and his meticulous methods for laying down bracing, multitextured guitar tracks in the studio.
Five For Friday
The new album is a tour de force of guitar layering. In a song like “Clear Eye Clouded Mind, ” which part came first—the quarter-note power chord foundation or the more urgent-sounding eighth-note riffs that complement it?
Doug [Gillard] plays the eighthnote riffs, but we tracked the songs completely until he came in and did extra little bits and bobs. The big blocks come first, unless it’s something like the beginning of “Waiting for Something”— which is its own little piece of music. I tend to write from the bottom up: Y’know, acoustic guitar and C, D, G type of stuff.
The sung melody at the same time. For years, I’ve recorded little bits and progressions, etc., onto tape and I’ve scribbled in a zillion notebooks, but most of that stuff just disappears. What tends to stick are the songs where the chords and vocal melody come to me at the same time.
Nada Surf Is Coming To The Granada Theater
Yeah, I just sit down with a Panasonic or Radio Shack tape recorder—even though I’ve had 8-tracks and 4-tracks and Logic and GarageBand and everything. I like cassette players because they’re so instant and you don’t have to look at a screen. And it’s also so unintimidating— because you
I usually write a third or half of a song, and once I get something I like, instead of finishing, I generally, like, get hungry and want a sandwich [
]. And then I fill up these tapes with that stuff, and every couple of years I force myself to sit down and listen through these—it’s like pulling teeth. It’s 98 percent forgettable—or painfully mediocre—but it’s worth it for that two percent of stuff that actually turns into something that we use on a record.
Matthew Caws From Nada Surf On Bob Dylan
]. That’s the first indicator. It’s, like, “Oh my god, I’m not in pain—wait a minute! I’m not hiding under my own desk!”
Or sing anything or try anything. And that’s why I can’t write with other people nearby, even if we’re on the road and have separate hotel rooms—which is definitely not all the time, because we’re not on that kind of a budget. But even if we have separate rooms, if somebody I know is in the next room, I can’t do anything. It’s such a private thing. Here’s the other thing: If I’m working on something and I wake up the next morning and it’s
In my head, that’s a bad sign. But if the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning is the hook I was working on the night before, then it gives me hope and I work harder on it.
How To Get A Rocking 60s Surf Guitar Tone (ultimate Gear Guide)
—which was recorded over the course of five days at Headgear in Brooklyn, New York—producer/engineer Chris Shaw says, “In general, it was easy because Matthew used THD Hot Plates to keep his volume at a reasonable level. And recording Doug was incredible, as he brought really well-thought-out parts to each song. The guy’s a monster.” To capture the remarkably textured and nuanced electric tones, Shaw used a Shure SM57 and an AKG 414. “I placed them around two-and-a-half to three inches from the cabinet, pointing straight ahead at the area halfway between the outside edge and the center of the speaker. To change things up when we were double tracking, I would move the mics closer or further back.” For the sparkling acoustic parts, including the Gibson J-200 doubled with a Nashville-tuned Guild jumbo on “When I Was Young, ” Shaw employed an AKG 414 and a DPA/B&K 4011. “The 414 was pointed at the lower half of the bridge, at a 45-degree angle, while the 4011 was directed at the point where the neck joins the body and angled slightly toward the soundhole.” Both mics were six to nine inches away from the instrument. All mics were routed through a pair of Daking 52270 mic preamps/EQs and a pair of Empirical Labs Distressors for compression.
Both. It’s singing the hook and thinking the chords. But even if it’s just a little guitar hook or a harmony—if I feel a little haunted by it for a couple of days, then I’m on to something. Before a record gets done, I’ve probably sung in my head or listened to those little pieces a hundred times each—because I just do it and do it and do it until I get sick of it, and then I throw it away. But if I listen again and again and again, and I
Oh, it’s the words. A chord progression will never make me cringe, it’ll just make me yawn. It can only be boring—it can’t be, like … stupid. But it only takes a couple of choice words to make it stupid [
Nada Surf's Matthew Caws Remembers Working With Ric Ocasek: 'i'd Never Heard Anything Sound So Big'
, and it really struck me that those versions sounded so different from how we ended up playing them onstage—and also different from the way I remembered writing them and playing them in early practices. I found that we’d sort of grown into two bands—one that’d kept the same energy onstage over the years, and one that had started to kind of slow down in the studio.
At first I was really frustrated, thinking that we’d gone into some kind of groupthink. Like, “Okay, we’re older now, and this is our career, and we’re trying to make stuff that’s going to last. Slow down! Calm down now! Hold on a minute—don’t run away with it, you kids!” But then when we recorded
, it was so much fun and there was so much good energy coming from the drums, for example—Ira [Elliot] is an
Board To Death Ep. 21
Live drummer— and I realized that it was actually all my fault. It was because I was finishing songs in the studio for years—not on purpose, but just because I’m an idiot and couldn’t finish them on time. I realized we play so differently when we
Know the stuff and we’re not tracking while also thinking, “Hmm … should the chorus be two times or three times? Let’s try this one more time, but do the chorus twice.” That kind of thinking on the fly was keeping us from sounding like we do live—where we just kind of go for it. So I made a concerted effort this time to just write 10 songs, instead of working on 25 half-done ideas. I got a big kitchen table, spread out 10 pieces of paper, and just tried to finish.
] twice. We made it with a different drummer with our pocket money for a tiny label in Spain, and then they ended up wanting to market us to the rest of the world but we were, like, “But you guys don’t have anything going on outside of Spain. We can’t give it to you—sorry!” So when we made it with Ric Ocasek, it was the second time, so we knew those songs cold. That was the only other record we’ve made so fast. This one we made in five days of basic tracking.
Ep50: Matthew Caws (nada Surf) On Giving Yourself Permission To Be Creative
, this time we didn’t go out of town to get away from
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