Track By Track: Nada Surf on You Know Who You Are

Matthew Caws (singer/songwriter/guitarist) has written a detailed account of each track, recalling diverse inspirations like radio jingles and Interstellar, and detailing the emotion that's been poured into each nugget of aural gorgeousness.

You Know Who You Are is Nada Surf's eight LP for City Slang, and follows 2012's The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy.

Stream "Believe You're Mine" from the record, and then check out Caws' fascinating Track By Track guide after. You can stream You Know Who You Are in full at the bottom of the page.

Cold To See Clear

"Cold To See Clear" is about moments of clarity and light and hope and positivity that sprout up to our surprise, even during periods where our lives feel a little like foggy drudgery, like numbing repetition. The specific image of the title is that shocking - but also euphoric - feeling of awakening you get can get in Winter when you open the window to see what the air feels like outside, maybe to look at the snow or decide how many layers you should wear. That awakening gives me instant peace at some animal level. It can also bring instant perspective. It can happen also in Summer, with a rush of balmy air.

Believe You're Mine

Lost love. Remaining obssession. Wanting to get over it. Asking questions about the past but wanting to move on. A desire to be stronger. A desire to be good to oneself. An inversion of the golden rule ("treat others as you wish to be treated"): "treat yourself as you wish others were treated."

Friend Hospital

This song is about a rich platonic relationship, we would stay at each other's houses, and would call that Friend Hospital, because many of these vists happened when or both of us were having a hard time. We would take care of each other, generally the host doing the caring, because the guest would be traveling and tired. Many of the phrases (wild sadness, new weakness, awkward limo, fantastic cemetery) are things we said on the phone during long rambling conversations.

New Bird

This song begins about deciding, or trying to decide, to be in a good mood, to rise above something, but it soon develops into a partial illustration of something that deeply affected my Father and affected me by association. He was born into a fundamentalist Christian sect in London and he lost the faith when he was sixteen, but stayed with his family for a few years, until landing a full scholarship to go to graduate school in the States. As he left he told them he was also leaving the group. The cost of leaving the latter's ranks is very high. You essentially get disowned. He visited once a year, meeting a very cold reception. A few years later, they became exclusive, and he never saw his parents again. I never did either, wasn't allowed.

Out Of The Dark

This song is loosely about hikikimori, a phenomenon whereby some young people (mostly in Asian countries for now), after experiencing a particularly upsetting embarrassment or setback, will retreat to their bedrooms and stay there for weeks or months or sometimes years, blocking out light by taping cardboard to the windows. It's common for their parents to refrain from seeking help lest the neighbours learn theirs is a troubled house. The principle of the song is that you don't need to have it all figured out. You don't have to defeat all your demons at once, but if you can handle a short little walk, even that will help.

Rushing

I was originally was hoping that this song would be sung by a woman because while there is (more and more) pressure on men to be attractive, there is still clearly more on women and this song touches on body-consciousness in the chorus, how the right person can make you forget issues of appearance, and more holistically can pull your mind up out of your body and into a plane of one-ness, of spirit. There's a line about watching the human river go by, when you're not participating or can't find your way in.

Animal

There's a scene in Interstellar where one of the characters (staying up for a couple of weeks when he's supposed to be cryogenically frozen) is listening to the sound of the sea and the creaking sails of a ship on his walkman, to remember that he's human (I may be getting this a little wrong, but it's how I remember the scene, and sometimes I'd rather go with my memory than Google, you know what i mean?). I was so inspired by this that for a couple of months I started to listen to wind on my headphones while doing things around the house. It was intense, trippy, bracing, exciting, a little scary, in mostly a good way. I was being constantly reminded that I'm on a PLANET with intense weather, questions of survival, danger, with not a lot of time to accomplish everything that one would like to accomplish in a life; that I'm an animal. It's also a love song that's trying not to sound like The Stones, despite a couple of chords that strongly suggest the opposite.

You Know Who You Are

A friend who's a BBC Radio news reader and roving reporter is converting a van so that she can live in it while she roams around looking for stories. I was talking to her about it while it was still a pipe dream. I'm sure whe would have gone ahead with her plan anyway, but it was exciting to be a cheerleader. I enjoy few things more than dreaming with someone, jumping into their ideas and contributing enthusiasm and ideas. There's a line about Andre Agassi's father, who used to used to pool shark strangers on the tennis court by playing them for money and then upping the stakes if they'd play his young son, who, not enjoying the process at all, would dutifully slay all comers, netting his Dad ten grand at a time. The chord progression and much of the melody I've had lying around since The Weight Is A Gift, believing in them whole-heartedly, but not managing to make any words stick until now. The album is not named after the song, the title was in place first. "You Know Who You Are" is a record about decisions, crossroads, dealing with turns in the road. It's not necessarily about knowing who we are, but about at least trying to find out, about trusting that that knowledge is somewhere inside us. It's also gut feelings. I've had some big decisions to make over the last couple of years and there were moments when I couldn't find my gut feeling, or I found two opposing ones. If that feeling isn't there, take care of yourself, get some sleep, eat regular meals, and wait a little, maybe it will come.

Gold Sounds

Standing in line at SXSW late one night last year, a little bored, I struck up a conversation with the fellow next to me. It turned out he was the general manager of non-commercial radio station in St. Louis, a really good one, that we'd visited a few years previously. I was standing with my friend Louie Lino, who was helped us with a lot of recording, mixed a bunch of songs for us, played keyboards with us on tour, and made pretty much all of If I Had a Hi-Fi. Louie was putting me up in his studio. Looking for something entertaining to talk about in this line that was hardly moving, I asked this fellow if Louie and I should record a jingle for his station. His answer was "if you record us a jingle we will play the shit out of it!" A couple of days later, with Louie at the controls, I put something down. The station manager had also intimated that if I made a jingle for the program director's show, called Gold Sounds, that would also be very awesome. We made one for that show too, which though very short, kept running through my mind. A few months later, a three-minute song grew out of it. A Krautrock beat, trance folk guitar, west coast harmony. I don't know what it is, but I like listening to it and sure enjoyed making it.

Victory's Yours

This is about how handing the other person victory can actually be the winning move: you don't have the fight anymore. This is one of two songs that I wrote with Dan Wilson (the other is "Rushing"). An amazing experience, collaborative, enriching... a musical and conversational adventure. Arguing makes me think of tennis (not that I'm any good, it's been years and years since I was even an occasional player): you're only as good as your opponent. If they hit a moonball out of the court, there is absolutely nothing you can do. If they're wild, you can't steer the game back to normal. In conflicts with people, it's good and healthy to know when to just give up and walk away. Let them keep arguing with the air. Wish them peace and go towards whatever light is around.

You Know Who You Are is out 26 February via City Slang. Stream the UK Premiere below, and check out the band's upcoming UK shows after.

April

9 - UK Manchester, Gorilla
10 - UK Glasgow, King Tuts
11 - UK London, Electric Ballroom