Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws isn’t big on organized religion, but when the spirit does move him, it always has a soundtrack. And that soundtrack has come a long way over the last 16 years. You’d be hard-pressed to discern so much as a whiff of snarky 1996 hit “Popular” amid the bracing, impeccably crafted power pop the trio hammers out with breathless efficiency on its new release, The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy (Barsuk). The transportive power of music is something Caws touches on quite frequently on Astronomy—that is, when he can tear himself away from more pressing concerns for our fucked-up planet. Caws will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him, and check out our cover story on Nada Surf in last month’s issue of MAGNET.
Caws: Somewhere around the end of high school and the beginning of college, I can’t remember exactly, I started going to a record store called Record Runner on Cornelia Street in the West Village. It was tiny, down a flight of stairs from the street. I became friendly with the guy who worked there. His name was Michael Carlucci, and he played guitar in a band called Winter Hours. Michael was the first person to play me a Dylan album other than Greatest Hits Vol 1. He loved to share his enthusiasm with you. His shop was where I first heard the Small Faces, Television, the International Submarine Band, so much music that remains important to me. The walls and ceiling were covered in singles and posters: Lou Reed, Bowie, Roxy Music, Patti Smith, the Byrds. I started watching the shop for him when he went on tour. That was an amazing period. The store was being sold, so I didn’t have to take in any orders or do anything complicated. I just sold what was there, read old copies of the NME and ate bagels from around the corner. Eventually, I started helping Michael at shows and became an occasional fill-in roadie for the band. On a couple of occasions when someone else was available to work at the store, I joined them on tour. We spent a week on the road with the Hoodoo Gurus, one of my favorite groups at the time. We made it all the way down to Athens, Ga. This was like school for me. Michael was (and is) an incredible guitar player, but more than getting to see him play every night, which was really something, I got to see how a band interacted on- and off-stage, how camaraderie could make the long drives go by faster, what my future might be like if I stuck with it and had some luck.
Video after the jump.
