{"id":11600,"date":"2016-10-12T05:30:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-12T09:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=11600"},"modified":"2016-10-10T11:42:43","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T15:42:43","slug":"nada-surf-still-believes-in-the-rock-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/12\/nada-surf-still-believes-in-the-rock-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Nada Surf Still Believes in the Rock Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brooklyn-based Nada Surf<\/b> has been called an indie rock band and a power pop group. Drummer Ira Elliot<\/b> is less concerned with how the group is labeled than he is getting in front of new audiences. And in an era when streaming playlists and downloads dominate, he and his band mates still put value in the album as a whole.<\/p>\n

Formed in 1992, Nada Surf has released 8 studio albums \u2013 2016’s You Know Who You Are<\/i> is the group’s latest \u2013 and two live albums including Live at the Neptune Theatre<\/i>, released earlier this year. The band’s closest brush with the big time came with its very first single, \u201cPopular,\u201d from the 1996 debut album High\/Low<\/i>. But Elliot says the band is always looking forward: with each new release, they’re starting again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt almost makes me feel like a teenager,\u201d he laughs. \u201cI mean, who’s in a band? 17 year old, 18 year old guys are in a band! I am a 53 year old man \u2013 a grown, adult man \u2013 and I’m a drummer in a rock band. It\u2019s crazy! It\u2019s totally insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Though he’s been Nada Surf’s drummer for 21 years now, Elliot’s history shows him to be a journeyman musician. In the 1980s he was the drummer for another beloved Brooklyn institution, the Fuzztones. He also spent time in \u201cshoegazer kind of bands, gothy kind of bands, reggae bands, and punk rock bands\u201d before becoming a roadie for the Smithereens. \u201cIt was fantastic,\u201d he says. \u201cI loved that job. It was life changing. And it reignited my desire to be the drummer in a band.\u201d He brought that passion to Nada Surf, and has played on all of their albums.<\/p>\n

Elliot says that a couple of years ago, he and his band mates \u2013 guitarist Matthew Caws<\/b> and Doug Gillard<\/b> and bassist Daniel Lorca<\/b> \u2013 toyed with the idea of abandoning the album format. \u201cWe thought, ‘Let\u2019s take a new tack. We\u2019ll just become a singles band; we will release a new single every couple of months, and it will be great.’\u201d But they quickly discovered that their working process didn’t lend itself to that approach. Releasing new music that often would require \u201cgetting together to record something and write something new every few months. Our lifestyles don’t allow that, because we live in different places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, when Nada Surf gathers in the studio, the aim is to record an entire album. \u201cMatthew will write five, six, seven things,\u201d Elliot explains. \u201cWe\u2019ll record those, and by the time we\u2019ve finished, he will have written two, three more.\u201d And then they continue recording. The results are reliably tuneful and rocking. \u201cOur music is simple enough and appealing enough that anyone of any age can get into it if they so choose,\u201d Elliot says.<\/p>\n