Could It Be We're Falling In Love?

With Its Upcoming Album, Nada Surf Wants To Get Lucky

originally published October 24, 2007

Much like finding that special someone, finding a band to love is a hard thing. Sure, there are moments of flirtation where a group may seem absolutely perfect, but closer inspection often brings out the flaws in the subject. But every once in a while, there's a keeper, and fans of Nada Surf have found their keeper. Built around the lonely voice of singer-guitarist Matthew Caws and his attention to detail, it's little wonder that people fall in love with Nada Surf every day. It's little surprise to the bandmembers, also.

"There's a mystical quality to the bands we love," says Nada Surf drummer Ira Elliot. "I like to think that [the quality] hasn't gone away. Maybe that's why people hold onto things, there's such a wave of crap that when you find something you like, you want to hold onto it."

While Nada Surf may seem like an island of good in the sea of mediocrity to some, Elliot chalks up his band's success to a keen attention to detail. "We're always trying to create a song where you can listen to it over again. We don't want to overdo it. That's what affects people, that feeling that a song is perfect. It's a huge victory when you can do that," he says.

Victory is something that the band is used to by now. Formed in the early '90s in New York City, the band has been refining its songcraft for almost two decades. What once was a struggle can now be boiled down to one simple criterion for knowing if the song is good enough, according to Elliot: "If the song's over, will someone want to listen to it again?"

In 2002, the band released Let Go, the rainy-day album to end all rainy-day albums. Full of sad harmonies, the music recalled the best parts of '60s pop, Velvet Underground minimalism and '80s college rock. The album received critical praise and brought Nada Surf to an entirely new audience, and it reached a level of critical success that the band had not before achieved.

"With Let Go, there is an undeniable and unrepeatable magic about the record," says Elliot. "You're always trying to capture lightning in a bottle with your records. You have to soldier on and hope that you can continue to make records and hope that they strike people in that way."

Now in the midst of recording the newest album, to be titled Lucky and released in February of '08, Elliot has a much more cavalier attitude towards the creative process. "It's a Nada Surf record," he laughs. "We're trying to make the same record over and over, but it comes out different every time."

If Elliot sounds like he and the other members of Nada Surf are no strangers to the perils of success, it's because the band has been there before. In 1996, the band scored a surprise novelty hit with the song "Popular," which caused the group to be thrown into the one-hit wonder ghetto of popular culture, a place that to casual music fans Nada Surf are just climbing out of.

"I was watching a commercial the other night and it had one of those "Best of the '90s" CDs, and I was watching the screen and there we were. There were so many bands that were on that who didn't survive that. But a few of them did," says Elliot.

Nada Surf was one of the survivors, something that Elliot attributes to the band's easygoing nature. "It's easy to do because there is not a lot of ego and not a lot of conflict," he says. "I often wonder how we would have handled it if we were in our early- to mid-twenties, and it probably would have been different."

But instead of reveling in the past commercial and critical glories, Nada Surf instead looks to its future, one that Elliot believes will be fertile. "When you realize that you've got a band that's simple and right, you don't want to give it up," he says. "We always had a feeling that the best stuff is yet to come. We feel like we are in the middle of it, and we're like 'what else can we do?'"

What the band can do is write great songs. Part pensive pop and part atmospheric rock, Nada Surf rises above the typical indie-rock doldrums and creates music that is as compelling as it is listenable. "The process of falling in love with a band or a song is a fine thing, and it doesn't happen all of the time," says Elliot. "It's easy to get bowled over by the sheer number of bands that come out, and a year later, they are old hats. [The music industry] is a lot like the Byrds song: 'with your hair combed right / your pants fits tight /it'll be alright.' It hasn't changed at all. It's old guys selling music to young people."

Ten years after their success and still going strong, the members of Nada Surf are out to prove that their legacy will not be a cautionary tale about record-label politics. Instead, they want their legacy to be something else, something like the bands that they grew up with and the almost mystical hold that they had on their fans. "Maybe we're being romantic and maybe we're fooling ourselves, but it does happen, and people do fall in love with music."

Jason Bugg

WHO: Nada Surf, Sea Wolf
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Monday, October 29
HOW MUCH: $10