Bio: Bands may embark on recording a cover album for all sorts of reasons: to pay tribute to a fellow artist or composer they love, to reveal something more about their ... (more)
Bio: Bands may embark on recording a cover album for all sorts of reasons: to pay tribute to a fellow artist or composer they love, to reveal something more about their influences, or maybe just to withhold their original new songs from a fiendish exec at some multi-national corporation. None of that, however, explains how Nada Surf came to recordif i had a hi-fi, its own wonderfully idiosyncratic stack of twelve cover tunes, over three weeks in Austin last year.
It started with a phone call, as vocalist and guitarist Matthew Caws explains. The trio’s longtime collaborator Louie Lino, who had played on and helped record and/or produce so many of their songs, had been their frequent touring keyboardist, and had a few years prior moved to Austin, Texas to open a recording studio. The band was about to leave for a final round of shows in Europe to support its 2008 Barsuk album Lucky and Caws was checking in to see if Lino could once again join them. With the new studio taking up all his time, Lino reluctantly declined. Recounts Caws, “I asked Louie, ‘Would it help if we gave you a raise?’ ‘Well, what would help,’ he told me, ‘is if you would some recording here.’ We really wanted him to come with us, so totally on a whim I said ‘What if we made a covers record there?’
The material came together as spontaneously and serendipitously as the very idea of the album. That’s the reason why a vintage Moody Blues tune, the proto-prog tempo-shifting “Question,” comes to share space with the Go-Betweens’ heart-rending "Love Goes On," or Depeche Mode’s grand “Enjoy the Silence” with experimental music icon Arthur Russell’s terse but sweet “Janine.” if i had a hi-fi is full of inspired, unexpected choices: from avant-pop Kate Bush to underground power-pop classicist Dwight Twilley. There are some intriguingly obscure numbers, like Spanish band Mercromina’s “Evolution” and under-documented Bill Fox’s “Electrocution.” The as yet little known Fox, of Cleveland cult band The Mice, inspired local groups like like Guided by Voices and Death of Samantha. Doug Gillard, who was in both of them, lends his highly evolved guitar skills to "Electrocution" as well as the Twilley and Go-Betweens songs.
That was another benefit of these sessions. Says Caws, “It was a great excuse to have friends of ours sit in on something without having to wait another two years.” Guest players include Martin Wenk (Calexico), Phil Peterson (Kay Kay and the Weathered Underground), Joe McGinty (Losers Lounge, Psychedelic Furs) and Holly Miranda.
Caws, his childhood friend, bassist Daniel Lorca, and drummer Ira Elliot have played together now for fifteen years. They’ve survived both overnight major-label success, thanks to the 1996 hit single “Popular,” and the inevitable morning-after bleariness, persevering past obstacles that would have sunk a less resilient combo to become one of America’s most truly independent bands. (The trio’s rendition of Spoon’s nastily clever “The Agony of Lafitte” references by association Nada Surf’s own troubles with Elektra Records.) As Boston Globe critic Sarah Rodman recently wrote, “It's been a pleasure to watch Nada Surf transcend those beginnings to release a string of increasingly well-honed and well-received albums that hold melody, atmosphere, and crunching guitar licks in high regard.” Experience has only made the group’s self-penned work richer, often bringing gravity to the subject matter yet lightness to its presentation. While they may have not written any of the songs onif i had a hi-fi, the album manages to say a lot about Nada Surf – where they came from and, most importantly how they have truly crafted a sound all their own. Caws agrees, “In playing back the songs it was like, well, this kind of sounds like us. Even though we're kinda playing it like them. We were really hoping that would happen.”
Perhaps the most revealing moment for Caws occurred when he did some subtle re-arranging to Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence,” replacing its arena-sized moodiness with a refreshingly down-to-earth arrangement bearing an entirely different velocity. Caws and his band-mates were covering without merely copying: “That was the first time I'd really changed a song to that degree, and that was really liberating. We usually learn a cover really fast, in broad strokes, and this is the first moment where we took the time to get into it and make these songs more our own.”
Fittingly,if i had a hi-fi will initially be available only at Nada Surf’s shows, another welcome by-product of this undertaking, for both band and fans. Though Nada Surf had literally toured the globe in support of Lucky – and had clearly earned itself some time off – the trio has been re-energized to hit the road again in support of if i had a hi-fi. This time everyone can partake of an in-the-moment experience and more, hearing these songs from the audience and then taking them home forever
For further information please contact Big Hassle Media at 212.619.1360:
Ken Weinstein
weinstein@bighassle.com
Or
Chris Vinyard
vinyard@bighassle.com
or
Ever Kipp at Barsuk Records
206-322-7785
ever@barsuk.com (less)
