Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws will be in town tonight (January 22) at City Winery, but it won’t be with his regular outfit. Nor will it be with Minor Alps, a duo he’s in with the region’s very own Juliana Hatfield. This time around is with The Salt Collective, a French-American collaborative that’s two parts pop, jangle and power specifically, with a side of indie rock.
The Salt Collective is directly rooted in the band SALT, a trio formed in France by guitarist and primary songwriter Stéphane Schück, bassist Fred Quentin and drummer Benoit Lautridou. The three released an album – along with original SALT members Anton Barbeau and The Posies’ Ken Stringfellow – in 2019 called The Loneliness of Clouds. Barbeau and Stringfellow moved on to other projects and Schück began working with Chris Stamey, best known for launching the ‘80s NYC power-pop band The dB’s.
It was the involvement of Stamey that directly led to a new assemblage being born, as he rang up a bunch of college rock icons to work on what would be the first LP under The Salt Collective banner, Life, released last spring. Caws and Hatfield were brought aboard, as were Matthew Sweet, Richard Lloyd from Television, Mitch Easter of Let’s Active, The dB’s rhythm section of Gene Holder and Will Rigby and their guitarist/singer Peter Holsapple, Pat Sansone of Wilco, Susan Cowsill and fresh face Faith Jones.
When you throw “collective” into the conversation – or a band’s name – it can get a bit confusing. Tonight’s City Winery show will see The Salt Collective lineup of Schück, Quentin, Caws, Easter, Stamey and Holder joined by Tres Chicas singer Lynn Blakey and The Connells drummer Rob Ladd. It’s the final date of a brief five show tour that began winding its way up the East Coast last week.
“It’s a nice mix because you have some of us [who] have been doing a lot, playing shows, some of us have not,” Caws tells Vanyaland. “We’re all kind of older, but it’s very new. So, there’s this great combination of age and experiential youth, and even for us who’ve been doing it for a long time, it’s a brand-new band. And I don’t get to be in any brand-new bands. [laughs] And I think the sort of collective aspect of it is really good.”
The day after the first gig in North Carolina, Caws showed he was worth his salt by sitting down for a Vanyaland 617 Q&A (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings). He explained how the vocal responsibilities in The Salt Collective have moved around a bit live to Blakey, Stamey and himself, talked about what drew him to the project in the first place, when there’ll be some new Nada Surf and why the so-called James Bond shower will leave you properly shaken and stirred.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: Throughout the Nada Surf catalog, there’s so many songs where you’ve either recorded or redone them in French or thrown in a line or two from the language. Now you’re in a band from France. Was that the goal all along?
Matthew Caws: No, [laughs] I mean, sure. What’s fun is that the whole American contingent of the group is North Carolinian. And so I’m the odd man out because I’m neither a French nor North Carolinian [Note: Caws is from NYC]. My mom grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I went there my whole childhood, and I lived in Paris for a couple of years on sabbatical years — so when I was five and when I was 12 — lived there and I lived three blocks away from where Stéphane lives now. I managed to coincidentally feel connected to the two poles of this project, which is great.
How did you become involved in The Salt Collective and think it was a good fit for you musically?
Well on paper, before hearing any music, because The dB’s were involved. I think some of the names were already in place like Matthew Sweet, Juliana Hatfield, a couple of others, but it’s because of Chris Stamey and The dB’s — absolutely — because I’m really big fan, an admirer, of the music. Also, I love producers. Every producer and engineer I’ve ever met; I’ve really enjoyed spending time with. I think it’s a “type” I really like, and I really admire Chris as a producer. So, I was sold on many levels right away on paper, and then I heard the track, because I was just sent “Asylum” at first, and thought it was great.
And also, kind of challenging because it took a weird turn. There’s a section where I go into a little spoken word bit and it’s really out there, it goes to some chords I definitely did not know. [laughs] And so I really loved how familiar and unfamiliar it felt, which is cool because something where part of it you’re not at all out of your depth and part of it where you are is great. The fact that it was this neat hybrid of in my wheelhouse and not was intriguing.
* * *
What’s it like for you, as someone who composes most of the songs in Nada Surf and then brings them to the rest of the band, to have someone compose the songs and then bring them, fully formed, to you to help finish?
Super liberating. And super liberating in a blanket way — just in general — having music finished, it takes away so many options. Cue all the aphorisms about options being the enemy of whatever. The great thing about not having composed the music is that I didn’t, in a muscle memory way, really know where one section ended in one section started. If you’re composing, even if you’re just working out some chord progressions, I think most songwriters have a kind of intrinsic automatic feel for like, “Well, that’s section A, whoop, here we go. This is section B, which is more likely to be a chorus. And that’s probably a verse. This is probably a bridge.” I tend to write words and music at the same time, but sometimes I do them separately. And if, for example, I’m writing music first, I will tend to kind of just put little mental Post-its on parts and kind of already know what’s going to be what, I don’t know what’s going to go there, but the delineations are pretty clear. But here, because I hadn’t written the chords, I just listened to it, it’s almost like being more free, which is why I think in that song, “Asylum,” at least, I think the relation of phrasing to chords changes a few times.
It’s a bit freer, which I really enjoyed. And so the way I did it was just to play the song again and again as I puttered around the house, kind of listening to the radio, listening to an instrumental radio station and waiting for it to feel like something was missing. And figure out what that missing thing is or play it so often, and it’s probably half an hour or an hour, but just letting it play on repeat. Sometimes things can happen unconsciously. So it was really fun and a little freer because I wasn’t involved in the music making and freer because I couldn’t… there was no pressure to write a song, at least musically. Definitely. I couldn’t break it. It couldn’t escape. It’s already done. There’s no messing up, which left, which allowed me probably in a way to be more…playful?
The single you’ve mentioned, “Asylum,” features Juliana Hatfield, whom you worked with quite a bit in the past. Did that bring an air of familiarity or comfort to the creation of that song for you?
Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. I adore her voice, absolutely love singing with her. I hope we do something together again one day if schedules and stars align. But yeah, I don’t know. There’s just such a… ”keening” is maybe an overused word, but there’s some kind of yearning or longing or disarming quality to her voice that I think is really special. I think even just having her a little bit on that song really raised it up.
The list of contributors on the Life album is such an impressive one. Obviously when you factor in schedules and the distance between everyone that’s involved in the album, it’s impossible to get the entirety of the talent on the same stage together. I’m wondering what sort of challenges that has presented when you’re thinking about the live show, when you want to do a song that Matthew Sweet worked on or Richard worked on in the studio, but now you have to help replicate that live.
Well, Chris Stamey did a spectacular job producing the record, but has also done a wonderful job as a music director to figure out how to put this on stage and to run us through our paces and kind of get us in shape and rehearsal. So, a few things moved around. “Why don’t you take this part? Actually, no, you take it.” There’s been some shifting on the fly a little bit, and it’s been great. Lynn Blakey is doing a fantastic job filling in on — as she said last night at the gig, she wanted to thank Matthew Sweet for giving her a job. [laughs]
The way that it was done with sharing files over the internet, is that something that you prefer instead of being in the studio with everyone, or is it just a separate beast entirely?
In this case, I far prefer it because, for example, if somebody had said, “We’ve got this track, why don’t you come on down, we’ll play it for you, and let’s see what happens.” The studio, I don’t know. I mean, obviously The Beatles and a lot of people have written in the studio, but they also could really afford it. But the taxi meter running does not help. And I think it hurts. In fact, for Nada Surf records, I do most of the vocals at home now, and I far prefer it. It’s a wonderful and very lucky development in music that people can record at home, because I think it allows far more kinds of people to make records, not just people who can invent on the spot and not just people who can nail it.
I would say many — most — singers do some amount of comping, which is when you sing a song, say three times, and then go through and pick a line from each take, and make a master take. But there’s no way that in the ‘50s people were doing that. There was no room. It could have been all live, or it could be a two track or a three track or four track recording. There’s no way. And so, it has lowered the bar, and I think in a great way because I think creation is democratic or should be completely democratic, right? It’s lowered the bar. I think the internet file exchange aspect of it probably helped the creation.
* * *
And talking about Chris as a musical director too, to keep it all together because, if you look at it on paper, so many other albums that have been done in a similar way, but not this way, not sharing it via files online, it sounds too patchwork. Whereas this sounds like a cohesive record.
Totally. And another thing that’s cohesive is that all the guests, most of us are from roughly the same era. The roots really feel like ‘80s college radio and all the songwriters are people that Stéphane, Fred and Benoit really like. Let’s call the three of them one taste entity, right? That bunch of friends, their taste encompasses us, so there’s a cohesion in the group. It’s not as random as it could be if you just got a bunch of singers, a bunch of songwriters. We have things in common. It’s a neat way to do it. It’s a neat way to do it just for one person to write a bunch of songs and then bring in the variety on top of this one set that works together. It’s cool. It’s a cool way to do it.
I’d be remiss not to ask you about Nada Surf. Since 2008, with Lucky, you guys have been releasing a new album every four years. If you plan to keep that streak alive, is it safe to say that we can expect something new in 2024?
Yeah. Almost done final mixes right now.
Excellent. That is great to hear.
I’m really glad to hear you say that because I’ve been scared to actually look at the numbers and look at the years, because I was afraid this was going to be a five or six, it feels like so long. But if we have a shot at making four, I’m really glad. I’ve guiltily, shamefully been just not looking at the calendar. [laughs] But I know it doesn’t matter. It’s always the right time for a record.
:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
There’s the James Bond shower, which is when you end your shower with cold [water]. I got it from my sister. I’ve been doing it for seven or eight years now. It’s really shocking at first, in a way that I miss, because the first few times you do it, you’re completely elated afterwards. It’s so shocking. You know when you come out of the ocean and you’re like really electric, alive? You get that. And I don’t quite get that so much anymore.
But what’s really good [about] it for a procrastinator, which I am, is just a daily training in doing something that you do not want to do in the moment, but that you will be glad to have done. For example, doing your taxes. You can’t do with one switch, but this is a thing you don’t want to do in the moment, but that you do want to do in the big picture that all you have to do is just turn you just the thing. There’s an instantaneousness about it that is a cool, daily kind of training. And the other thing is, as the world is getting hotter, in summer when you end your shower cold, your clothes go on easier. Everything slips on. You feel great. Really good for you. Invigorating. Good for you. Calming.
* * *
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
Nada Surf covered “Enjoy the Silence” and you wrote the foreword to my book Depeche Mode: All That’s Left to Know About the World’s Finest Synth-pop Band, for which I am forever grateful. Give me seven of your favorite synth-pop songs or artists from over the years where if you were to say, “Hey, if you want to get into synth-pop, this is what you should check out.”
“Seconds” by Human League. I think it’s about Kennedy being shot, but I didn’t really know that. What really draws me to the song is that those synthesizer sounds are still my favorite. They’re so beautiful.
“Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” by Gary Numan. Fantastic.
Don’t know how to pick one song, but the whole oeuvre of — I hate pronouncing things correctly in French because you sound like such an asshole. So I have to remember how to say it wrong. The whole “oeuvre” [pronounces it like “hoover”] of Sylvan Esso. I mean, holy moly. They’re beautiful.
Depeche Mode — “New Life”
Pete Shelley — “Homosapien”
Let’s Active — “Room with a View”
B-52’s — “Whammy Kiss.” It’s so great. Oh my God, what an incredible song. And it’s totally synth-pop.
THE SALT COLLECTIVE + SNEAKERS :: Monday, January 22 at City Winery Boston, 80 Beverly St. in Boston, MA :: 7:30 p.m., all ages, $25 to $35 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
