The Art of Longevity Episode 63: Nada Surf

The Art of Longevity

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In this day & age of abundance, you can easily forget what’s precious - like your favourite bands. If you are anything like me the question “what’s your favourite band” now has an official top 40. As in I have a rolling 40 favourite bands. Making a welcome return to the top 40 is Nada Surf, the ‘New York’ (now firmly remote) indie band that first hit my favourites list way back in 2005.
I always remember how I discovered a band, in the case of Nada Surf it was on a Mojo or Uncut free “covermount” CD (do they still do those?). The track “Do It Again” from The Weight Is A Gift Album (2005) has one of my all-time favourite basslines. Indeed, in our Art of Longevity chat, Matthew Caws and myself ended-up riffing on a playlist of pop songs in which the first thing you hear is the bass line. If playlists were still a thing, that would be a good one. It was a pleasant digression from the important matter of surviving the music industry.
Nada Surf is one of those bands that’s easy to forget about when music is so abundant and that would be a big mistake. Stumbling upon a new Nada Surf record every 4-5 years is a highly recommended balm for modern day life. I can’t think of many bands (or in the case of Matthew Caws, songwriters) who provide the soundtrack to fumbling through life in the way we sometimes do, especially if you recognise the traits of attention deficit, as Matthew does - the origin and subject of the band’s superb new song ‘In Front of Me Now’, which I have adopted as a theme tune for the time being. In my head, if you will, this song is a number #1 hit single.
Over the years, Matthew’s subject matter for Nada Surf’s songs covers life’s day to day tribulations, the mangled thought processes that cycle through our brains and how to see light from the dark patterns that surround us. We are essentially keeping Matthew company as his life has played out.
“Most of the time a song is just impressionistically how I’m feeling”.

Nada Surf is one of those bands that made their way through a 30-year career and nine studio albums without disturbing the charts. Yet the band has never made a bad record and indeed Matthew, modest to a fault, is somewhat coerced into being proud of never making a dud album.
“It has felt great in terms of longevity for a very long time. Unbelievably when we were making The Proximity Effect (the sophomore album in 1998) most of the bands that we toured with had broken up and we were sticking together. That felt unusual”.
Whether new album Moon Mirror will change the trajectory for Nada Surf remains to be seen of course, although it’s unlikely. That’s just the modern music landscape in the streaming era. Perhaps what matters more, is that not only is the new album very much not a dud, but one of the best indie sets you are likely to hear in 2024. And that’s saying something, since guitars and indie bands are back in fashion, albeit the modern kind i.e. a new crop of cult bands. Let’s hope some of this new crop of indie guitar bands can stay the course the way Nada Surf has done. Turns out surfing on nothing can be a lasting pastime.

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