Second coming of Nada Surf

Trio gains indie credibility 10 years after its initial break
By Austin Powell
Daily Texan Staff

Matthew Caws wore his black-rimmed glasses when he read from “Penny’s Guide to Teen Etiquette,” the book that helped inspire the lyrical content of Nada Surf’s sardonic high school anthem, “Popular.”

“Anywhere he read from that book was equally ridiculous,” recalls Nada Surf drummer Ira Elliot.

“Popular,” as anyone under 30 will probably recall, was one of the biggest singles and most heavily rotated videos on MTV in 1996. The only problem was that the niche for soaring electric guitars and melodious pop choruses was already well established by Weezer one year earlier.

Though the two bands both utilized comedic wit in their lyricism and shared the same producer for their debut albums, Ric Ocasek, Nada Surf blames something else entirely for the shadow of a flying “W” that plagued them for years.

“I honestly think the biggest factor was those damn glasses [Caws] was wearing at the time,” says Elliot. The Buddy Holly frames popularized by Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo made Nada Surf appear as a novelty act, a one hit wonder to their label at the time, Elektra Records.

“We were trying to identify a musical identity for us as a band away from that song and it just couldn’t happen for like five or six years, and in a lot of aspects that is still true,” Elliot says of the song’s effect.
After their follow-up record, The Proximity Effect, failed to produce a “Popular” single, the trio was dumped, left for dead, and forgotten with their only traces of existence left on MTV Buzz Bin albums.

“If you sign with a major label, and then for whatever reason, it doesn’t do anything ... You owe them a lot of money, you have this contract that you can’t break, it happens more often than not,” Eliot says. “Our situation in the U.S. was pretty bad.”


After four years of what seemed like silence from the band, Nada Surf resurfaced with their third album, Let Go, on the indie label Barsuk Records, with whom Elliot says the band has had a “constant love affair.”

Let Go revealed a more musically mature Nada Surf, one that placed more emphasis on introspective, heartfelt lyricism and layers of soft acoustic textures. It’s an affect largely attributed to the influence of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, who performed mixing and engineering duties on the record.

“When we first met the guys from Death Cab it was at SXSW three or four years ago, they literally opened their arms and flung them around us as if we were like family,” Elliot says.

Ever since, Nada Surf has followed Death Cab’s route to popularity, making several appearances on popular television shows like “One Tree Hill” and “The OC.”

“The whole episode [of “One Tree Hill”] was like a Nada Surf commercial. The producer was a big fan of the band, they incorporated some of the story of the band into the episode. We were shocked,” Elliot says. “We don’t have a video on MTV, but we have that.”

While Nada Surf is currently achieving phenomenal amounts of success from their recently released fourth album, The Weight is a Gift, one place the band isn’t likely to follow Death Cab is back to Elektra Records. Though Nada Surf did make sure that their friends knew what they were getting themselves into.

“When they were sitting around with Elektra and Elektra was giving them their talk on artist development, Nick [Harmer] the bass player said, ‘Artist development huh? What about Nada Surf?
What about Superdrag and he rattled off like six bands like Ween and Spoon and Queens of the Stone Age that were on Elektra for an album or two and then became wildly popular after they were off the label,” Elliot said. “I think Elektra changed the subject pretty quickly.”

The move obviously proved to be enormously beneficial for Death Cab. Their firm grounding in the indie scene provided for them the necessary tools to create a deal that catered to their needs, allowing them to sell thousands of records and even receive a Grammy nomination.

Nada Surf may have taken the completely opposite career path as Death Cab, but they have finally found a home at Barsuk Records, created a musical identity away from the nerd-rock cliché, and are even ready to finally embrace their past success.

“There was a long period where we avoided playing ‘Popular,’” Elliot said, “but now it’s kind of like the heavy guns; we just have to use it in the right context.”

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