Nada Surf

Matthew Caws on „Moon Mirror“, songwriting and why choosing the right vacuum cleaner matters.

Congrats on the new album! It’s your 9th studio album. How do you manage to sound so fresh and new while still sounding 100% like „you“?

Thank you! I don’t know…I think we’re not doing anything on purpose. I still love playing and making up songs – it’s my happy place and one of the most relaxing things I do, but also the most exciting and so it still feels fresh. When you write songs, you don’t know what you’re doing and so everytime you write it still feels kind of like an adventure. I mean I know a few tricks or whatever, but still…I’m making it up. And I don’t know any music theory, I don’t know what chord is supposed to go with what chord so there’s still adventure. Maybe that’s the answer.

Would you say it’s better not to know so much about chord progressions and stuff so you can be more creative?

No, I wish I knew more, but I have ADD and stuff and so you know…I always wanna read the manual to a piece of equipment and I don’t. Like a drum machine – I figure out how to make a beat but I can’t figure out how to make the beat change into another beat like…make a sequence. I seem to not quite get there. But I think knowledge is good and I wish I had more. I started taking piano lessons last year and it kind of fell off cause I was busy or something, but I still like the idea of learning stuff and being an eternal student. 

Photo: Tanja Wilbury @the_analogue_heartbeat

„In front of me now“ is about trying to be in the moment – what helps you to „be in the moment“?

I kind of have to force it, you know? I mean it’s an aspirational song cause in the song I’m making myself a promise to just do one thing at a time, but the problem is…it’s a total failure. And in fact, the ironic failure is that I wrote the song while driving a car. 

I’ll tell you the whole story: We were doing spring cleaning and Emily, my wife, asked me to fill the bath cause she wanted to put some bleach in it, give it a good clean and meanwhile my part of spring cleaning was – I was vacuuming the house wearing noise cancelling headphones. And so she’s like: „Could you fill the bath?“ and I said: „Sure“ and I start the bath and I go back to vacuuming the house wearing noise cancelling headphones. So bad. And I was sure: „Oh, of course I’ll remember that. Of course.“ and ten minutes later she comes running up the stairs and says: „What is happening?!“ And seven smoke alarms were going off in the whole house cause they were tripped by the water, which is good, but I’m flooding the house. It’s a super disaster and so I go into super overdrive and try to fix everything – I’m mopping and I’m trying to turn off the smoke alarm and I can’t figure out how to turn it off…eventually the house didn’t really take damage, the electrician came and turned the electricity back on a few hours later…everything was okay, Emily wasn’t mad at me, everything was fine – except that I was so mad at myself and so upset about it and I had extra tinnitus from the smoke alarm. It’s such a bad story. But so I was so depressed and I had this new ringing in my ear and two days later I’m driving – I had a two hours drive to do – and I’m like „I gotta get out from under this grey cloud.“ And you know sometimes to get yourself out of something, you have a wave of like: „I can do this! From now on! That’s the secret! One thing at a time!“ And then I’m in a really good mood cause I got this song going in my head. (Sings: „I used to be dreaming, when I was driving“) and I started to write it and I’m like „It’s fine, it’s going to be a good song, I got it, you know, at least I got something out of it“…but I’m driving at the same time! So I did get a song out of it, which is nice, but how do I do that at the moment? You know…once in a while I catch myself and do one thing. I’m super addicted to my phone and it’s hard for me to clean up the house without listening to a podcast. Now I need entertainment all the time and I started to come out the other side like: „No, I’m gonna clean the house without a podcast today.“ So once in a while I grab hold of the moment.

Little challenges…

Yeah. I’m trying.

We’re all trying…

It’s hard though! Unlimited entertainment! And now at any point we need to be entertained…I have this now instinctual need.

Yeah. Silence feels weird now. You’re at home and you finally have some time to calm down and just relax and you’re like „No, I need to be doing three things at once. Like the TV’s running, but you’re on your phone cause even one source of entertainment is not enough anymore.

Totally! I’ve gone back to movies and actually what I’m really into – I’m watching film noir movies now from the 40s and stuff and it feels good. Something about them being black and white…it’s almost slower cause it’s less entertainment, you have fewer colours coming at you and I’m sticking with it for two hours so – I’m trying. It’s hard.

Photo: Tanja Wilbury @the_analogue_heartbeat

Even your sad songs sound always quite hopeful – how do you keep a positive outlook on life during these challenging times?

Well, it’s a magic trick and I think it’s a magic trick we’re good at, because the fundamental contradiction of the fact that we’re all gonna die and yet we look for happiness every day. We celebrate things, we get birthday presents and we make all this fun even though it’s hopeless because we’re all…you know. So I think that holding contradictory ideas in your head at the same time is one of our skills and one of the things we do. So maybe that’s it. And then the other thing is that I find making music so comforting and also I think all our sad songs probably have really easy chord progressions that are like Mac and Cheese. Comforting. They’re all kind of pretty and kind of catchy and kind of comforting and easy and that’s how I cheer myself up – it’s just fun to sit and play four catchy chords in a row. Even if they’re really obvious – as long as it sounds good…

But I’m feeling really fine and happy anyway – in the moment at least. I think I’m a happy sceptic. I know things are bad, but we still gotta get through the day.

You mention topics like mindfulness and anxiety in your songs. Do you read a lot about these things?

A little bit, not tons. I read a couple of books on Zen, but Emily, my wife, reads a ton about anxiety cause she’s always thinking about our son and so she’s like a „research parent“. But I think they’re constant topics even though the language is new. 10, 15 years ago I was thinking about anxiety and now I call it ADHD, but it’s actually the same thing I’ve always had – I just have a name for it now – which I think is happening with a lot of people. That term is all over the place – which it wasn’t, but we’re the same people we’ve always been. And it’s starting to feel like neurotypical is not so typical like…who’s neurotypical? Everybody I know is like…spazzy. (looks at us) I’m not making assumptions! (laughs)

How has your songwriting evolved over the years and what’s your favourite songwriting guitar?

The only way it’s evolved really is the timing, because when I didn’t have a family and I felt like working on something I would stay up all night and I can’t do that anymore. Now it’s early, early, early in the morning. But I welcome the change, I think it’s really good. You live more than one life anyway and I lived that life. I stayed up all night and now I don’t. For a lot of songs on this record I ended up getting up at 5, 5:30 am for like six or seven weeks cause it was the tail end of the pandemic and I was enjoying the day before the rest of the family took over the living room. Cause there’s a different feeling if you’re making stuff up in a little room and in a big room. The little room reflects everything back at you and so it’s easier to annoy yourself or be self conscious whereas in a big room – if you feel safe – and there’s really nobody around and nobody can hear you and you feel free…it’s kinda great. Just that space makes everything sound a little nicer. So anyway I got up really early in the morning and it’s super corny, but it’s really true, that at that hour my inner critic is a lot quieter and – a funny way of putting it – still asleep and that’s partially because what happens often is that I’m working on something and it’s two in the afternoon and I wish that I started at noon and I go „Why? Am I lazy? Why didn’t I get around to it?“ There’s like shame and shame gets in the way. But at that hour everything’s free. There’s nothing that can go wrong…I’m not wasting the day, there’s no day. There’s no time. Nothing matters. I was just a lot easier on myself. So I made a lot of stuff up then and that’s where most of the record comes from.

Photo: Tanja Wilbury @the_analogue_heartbeat

So what about your favourite songwriting guitar?

I have a little baby Martin, like a 00-18 with a little body, but then currently…the guitar I’m playing most of the time is a present. We were in Dublin and I went to a store and I played this guitar and it was great. It was really expensive so I didn’t even think of getting it and I went back to the club and we’re all comparing stories like „What did you do?“ And I said: „I played this guitar“ and Daniel was like: „Oh, what guitar?“ and I told them and they are like: „What store?“ and I told them, not thinking anything of it. And I would play the show and we’re on the bus, we’re having some drinks, I go to bed first around 2 am and I go up to my bunk and there’s something in there. I can’t get in. And he went and bought it for me. Very sweet. So that’s my number one right now.

It’s a Gibson J50. J50s are like J45s but they’re blonde. In 1955 this changed from a little teardrop shaped pick guard to this big western complicated design and I never liked it aesthetically and in fact when I first liked the guitar that day I didn’t even notice it, but months later and even a couple of years later I thought „Why do I not play that more? It was so nice of him to buy it for me…oh it’s because of that design, I don’t like it. And then just a few months ago I was like „Wait a minute! It’s a present, therefore I can’t sell it and I don’t want to anyway, but I literally can’t which means I’ll just take it off. So I had the pick guard removed.

I get it. A guitar has to sound great – obviously, but it also has to be beautiful.

Yeah, aesthetics matter. When I was in my late 30s, early 40s, I bought a vacuum cleaner – a yellow one from Miele. So great! It looked so good that I would leave it out which means I used it more often which means I cleaned the house more often so the aesthetics paid off. Get a vacuum cleaner that looks nice!

(Here we started talking about vacuum cleaners in a way that probably proves that no one in that room was neurotypical.)

Back to guitars. If you could own any guitar in the world…which one would it be?

I’d have a late 40s Gibson J50, which is the Dylan one. And I lent a 1968 Gibson ES-330 to a friend many years ago when I got stoned and I’d get that back. I don’t know what else…I’m pretty satisfied, I have what I need. I’ve been around a while…I’ve collected some.

If you could own the guitar of a person…no matter which one…

Well I’ve played really special ones cause I went to the Martin Factory in Pennsylvania and it was post pandemic and I was the first visitor they’d had in two years and their docent, the guy who runs the museum, was there and he had the key and he opened all the cases so I played Hank Williams’ guitar, I played Kurt Cobain’s acoustic guitar. I think I’d want Joan Baez’s 1880 Martin, which is the one that Dylan played at Newport.

(Just as we were chatting about guitars, someone walked in and handed Matthew his 1960 Gibson J50, which is a total beauty. And sounds great.)

Since you’re touring right now – how do you pick songs for the setlist? And what’s your favourite new song to perform live?

Well we’re always just trying to play a little bit from each period and there are some songs that really feel good live that we always do and then for example songs like „Inside of love“ which feels like – to me –  is kind of our best song. It’s the one I’m most proud of writing cause it gets right to this big simple idea and describes it…I like it. We play it pretty much every show. „Blonde on blonde“ feels really good live – it’s big and slow and spacey…“Popular“ just feels right to do, I love playing it, I think it’s really funny and because it’s our best known it wouldn’t feel right not to play it – just in case somebody was like: „Hey, let me check out this band that I remember from the 90s“ and not playing one they know would feel obnoxious so we always play that.

„In front of me now“ is the best feeling new one probably – oh and „Open seas“! I really love doing this. It felt really good in the States. It’s about the lyrics to some extent and lately on this European tour I’ve been worrying like „Maybe it’s boring people“…Well we’re trying to keep it spread out. It works itself out.

Are there any songs that you would prefer to play live more often, but you just can’t?

There are ones that I just haven’t got around to learning like „Give me the sun“ that’s got a couple of solos – I can’t remember how to do them. I keep meaning to learn that. „Moon mirror“. I made the whole song up kind of on the spot and so it’s very illogical..some lines repeat, but in places next to other in a different way…it’s so complicated and I have to just learn it by heart and I’m still working on it. And there are ones where I think: „I’m the only one that loves it“ like „The moon is calling“ – it’s one of my favourites, but no one seems very excited about it. I mean I could force the issue but I haven’t.

So it’s a democracy?

Yeah. Everyone needs to be seen.

Photo: Tanja Wilbury @the_analogue_heartbeat

You’ve been around as Nada Surf for quite a while now. What do you think is the secret for keeping a band together for so long?

Number one: friendship. That’s obvious. The glue is the audience actually, because the concerts seem to be happy experiences and they always have been and it’s really lucky that we seem to make the audience happy. So playing live is a good feeling. I don’t know…if that wasn’t there, it’d be harder to justify doing it first of all, because we’re all making a living, but nobody is like buying a big house or something. And going on tour is hard on your family – so why would you do it?

But the audience is fantastic. The other thing is that even though we have arguments sometimes – there are disagreements and stuff – but somehow there’s a mutual respect for the space, for our communal space. Nobody is like: „F*** you“ – that just doesn’t happen. We’ll say: „I’m upset“ or something, but there’s no outbursts. And I think that’s a love of each other and a respectful relationship, but also a respect for the thing we have. Nobody wants to break it. We wanna be careful with it. It’s precious to us. So yeah…respect and fun. It’s a high. It’s super fun to play – and even just with each other – we really like to play new songs together and my favourite part – it’s not an answer to the question, but it’s related – is that almost the best part about being in a band is in the practice space. The first time you get it right. You have a new song and you work out how to play together and you get it right and that is a super duper feeling, cause you just made something and now it exists. It didn’t exist five minutes ago and here it is and we can do it again. Let’s do it again! You wanna play it again? Let’s play it again! And all of a sudden you’re having this thing. It’s like pulling something out of the oven – and there it is! Except that it is permanent! And forever! It’s like forever cake!

If you want to get a piece of that forever cake, be sure to catch Nada Surf on tour – cause we all know that the best place to „be in the moment“ is at a gig…