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Surf's Up For N.Y. Alternative Rockers

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By CURTIS ROSS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 29, 2008

Most bands dream of scoring a hit record. The reality isn't always so dreamy.

New York City trio Nada Surf was all over MTV thanks to "Popular," the hit single and video from its debut album, 1996's "High/Low."

The not-particularly representative tune sold the band some albums but also got it unfairly labeled as Weezer knockoffs. Having Ric Ocasek produce "High/Low," as he did Weezer's eponymous 1994 album, didn't help.

The band's label, Elektra, expected a hit single off Nada Surf's second album, 1998's "The Proximity Effect," but didn't hear one among the songs the band submitted.

"They weren't into it," drummer Ira Elliot says by telephone from his Brooklyn home. "We were pretty proud of second album, but at the time we were living and dying by radio and it didn't really have a strong radio single."

Thus began about two years' worth of legal wrangling to free Elliot and band mates Matthew Caws (guitar and vocals) and Daniel Lorca (bass) from their contract.

But a funny thing happened on the way to one-hit-wonder obscurity.

"We sort of developed our own comfort space when it came to making third album 2002's 'Let Go.'" Elliot says.

"We'd been through the ringer and we were off the musical map - 'Thank you, Nada Surf. Next!,' Elliot says. "No one was expecting anything when we made the third album. But in the preceding three years we'd gained confidence that we'd become a really good band."

The album found the band settled into its own identity, with songs centered on Caws' clear tenor vocals and carefully honed lyrics ("Matthew fusses over every word," Elliot says. "No wonder. His parents are both academics.") and the trio's melodic but spare and occasionally angular pop.

"This Weight Is a Gift," from 2005, continued the band's winning streak, and this year's "Lucky" is another winner, even injecting some guarded optimism into the band's tone of sometimes bemused resignation.

It's a far different sound from the one that introduced MTV viewers to the band in 1996.

"We were kind of like a garage band on the first record," Elliot says. "That's what we sounded like live.

"We made 'High/Low' in two or three weeks," Elliot says. "It was all stuff we'd been playing for half a year at the time. We were playing in New York clubs for three, four or five people sometimes. You can hear our Clash influence, the Pixies, some angular Sonic Youth stuff, all our primary influences."

Lorca, the son of a diplomat, met Caws at a tony New York prep school. Elliot, on the other hand, hails from Joey Ramone territory, Forest Hills in Queens.

"Ever since I was 12 or 13, I've been the drummer," Elliot says with a laugh. "That's been my identity."

A music major at Hofstra University, Elliot passed an audition in the early '80s and joined '60s garage-rock revivalists The Fuzztones.

Among the band's fans, he says, were Caws and Lorca. In fact, Elliot reports, a pompadoured Lorca can be seen dancing onstage with the 'Tones in some old film footage of the band.

ON TOUR

Nada Surf

WITH: The Republic Tigers

WHEN: 8 p.m. Tuesday

WHERE: State Theatre, 687 Central Ave., St. Petersburg; (727) 895-3045

COST: $15

Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.

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