Friday 21st June, music festival, Matthew Caws, guitarist and leader of the Nada Surf group, carries his guitar case backstage in a hall in the Bastille district of Paris. Zen, aged fifty, gives a solo acoustic concert broadcast live on Oüi FM radio. A small sample of his work Moon Mirrorninth album and excellent vintage from the trio that formed since 1994 with bassist Daniel Lorca and drummer Ira Elliot, reinforced by keyboardist Louie Lino, who joined them during the 2000s.
Coincidentally, the Brooklyn, New York group is celebrating thirty years since the release of their first single, The Plan/Telescope. In its beginnings, Nada Surf could have been what we usually call a one hit wonderthe “one hit band,” with the aptly named Populara nervy, nirvanesque rock anthem released in 1996 that introduced them to the general public. Signed to major label Elektra Records, the American trio was somewhat hastily placed in the alternative rock category with big guitar riffs alongside Weezer and others.
painful experience
However, their second album, The proximity effect (1998), surprises with its more chiseled pop approach, under the auspices of REM, Teenage Fanclub and the Beatles. This direction does not correspond to the expectations of their record company: a two-year legal procedure is followed for the trio to recover the rights to the album. Despite this painful experience, the “ex-Popular » recover as independents and release masterful albums: Let it go (2002), Weight is a gift (2005) and Lucky (2008).
Since then, the most Francophile of American rock groups (Matthew Caws, like Daniel Lorca, studied at the French Institute in New York) has always been welcomed with open arms in France and its neighbouring countries, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland, where they tour almost every year and fill venues such as the Bataclan in Paris and the Coopérative de Mai in Clermont-Ferrand.
However, we can’t help but wonder: what is it that still drives the 57-year-old singer to continue in a rock band? “Making songs, singing and playing is what calms me the most.”Matthew Caws answers. It’s almost meditative, which is comforting to me. And then I like touring, the stage has become a bit like our home. Over the last thirty years I’ve had several romantic relationships, changed apartments, changed jobs, but the scene has always remained there. » Although the family balance is tipping ever more as time goes by, admits this father of two children aged 20 and 7.
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