Nada Surf: Rockwood Music Hall 2020

New York’s own Nada Surf have been carving out their reputation as melody-mongers and crafty merchants of the most affecting kind of power pop since their debut, High/Low, came out in 1996. That album was produced by Ric Ocasek, to whom their outstanding new album, Never Not Together, is dedicated.

The songs on this album sparkle in the style which Matthew Caws, Daniel Lorca, and Ira Elliot have been defining for a quarter century and own as musicians who have been growing as people and vice versa. Joined by longtime ally and frequent contributor Louie Lino, the band returned to the town where Caws first met Lorca as students at Lycée Français de New York on the Upper East Side.

Between songs in this rare acoustic performance at Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side, I enjoyed asking questions about their current hit, “So Much Love,” and about Ocasek. The latter query led to a classic New York storybook tale about the band and inspired an impromptu cover of a Cars fave.

Setlist:

• Looking Through
• Whose Authority
• Killian's Red
• So Much Love
• Looking For You
• Just Wait
• Just What I Needed
• Something I Should Do

[Recorded: 2/3/20; Engineer: Hear No Evil and Jim O'Hara; Producer: Sarah Wardrop]