onstage over the years, and one
that had started to kind of slow
down in the studio.
At first I was really frustrated,
thinking that we’d gone into
some kind of groupthink. Like,
“Okay, we’re older now, and this
is our career, and we’re trying to
make stuff that’s going to last.
Slow down! Calm down now!
Hold on a minute—don’t run
away with it, you kids!” But then
when we recorded Hi-Fi, it was so
much fun and there was so much
good energy coming from the
drums, for example—Ira [Elliot]
is an incredible live drummer—
and I realized that it was actually
all my fault. It was because I was
finishing songs in the studio for
years—not on purpose, but just
because I’m an idiot and couldn’t
finish them on time. I realized
we play so differently when we
really know the stuff and we’re
not tracking while also thinking,
“Hmm … should the chorus be
two times or three times? Let’s
try this one more time, but do
the chorus twice.” That kind of
thinking on the fly was keeping us from sounding like we
do live—where we just kind of
go for it. So I made a concerted
effort this time to just write 10
songs, instead of working on 25
half-done ideas. I got a big kitchen table, spread out 10 pieces of
paper, and just tried to finish.
second time, so we knew those
songs cold. That was the only
other record we’ve made so fast.
This one we made in five days
of basic tracking. And, this time
we didn’t go out of town to get
away from home distractions, as
we’ve done for years. When we’ve
done that, you have that period
of closing up shop, packing up
your apartment, shipping some
gear, arriving in Seattle or San
Francisco, and then taking a day
off to recover from jet lag. When
you finally get back in the studio,
you’re, like, “Wait—how did that
[groove] feel again?” This time,
we finished the last practice on
a Sunday, rolled the gear three
blocks away to the nearest decent
studio, and the next day at noon
we were tracking. We didn’t have
to check a metronome, we didn’t
have to ask any questions—we
just did it. And it came out just
like it sounded in the practice
studio—which is exciting,
because now I don’t have to
listen to it through some filter,
like, “Yeah, well, y’know—it’s
an album. It’s a little different,
but that’s cool. How mature.”
This time, I hear it and I’m, like,
“Whoa—that’s us. Cool!”
Well, it worked—the songs
are tight and they rock like
you guys have been playing
them for a while.
Exactly, and we haven’t had that
luxury in ages. We made our first
album [1996’s High/Low] twice.
We made it with a different
drummer with our pocket money
for a tiny label in Spain, and then
they ended up wanting to market
us to the rest of the world but we
were, like, “But you guys don’t
have anything going on outside
of Spain. We can’t give it to
you—sorry!” So when we made
it with Ric Ocasek, it was the
The bass is locked in so tight
with the guitar on pretty
much all the songs. Do you
work extra hard with Daniel
to get a tight groove that really maximizes that punchiness,
or is that lockstep power just
a result of how long you guys
have played together?
That’s just us playing together
for so long that, when we kind
of go into your basic, eighth-note chugga-chugga thing, we’re
pretty locked—just because
that’s what we’ve been doing
for so long.
ENGINEER
CHRIS SHAW
ON THE STARS
SESSIONS
regarding the guitar-tracking
portions of nada Surf’s new
The Stars Are Indifferent to
Astronomy—which was record-
ed over the course of five days
at headgear in brooklyn, new
York—producer/engineer chris
Shaw says, “in general, it was
easy because matthew used
thd hot Plates to keep his
volume at a reasonable level. and recording doug was
incredible, as he brought really well-thought-out parts to
each song. the guy’s a monster.”
to capture the remarkably textured and nuanced
electric tones, Shaw used a Shure Sm57 and an aKG
414. “i placed them around two-and-a-half to three inch-
es from the cabinet, pointing straight ahead at the area
halfway between the outside edge and the center of the
speaker. to change things up when we were double
tracking, i would move the mics closer or further back.”
for the sparkling acoustic parts, including the
Gibson J-200 doubled with a nashville-tuned Guild
jumbo on “When i Was Young,” Shaw employed
an aKG 414 and a dPa/b&K 4011. “the 414 was
pointed at the lower half of the bridge, at a 45-degree
angle, while the 4011 was directed at the point where
the neck joins the body and angled slightly toward the
soundhole.” both mics were six to nine inches away
from the instrument. all mics were routed through a
pair of daking 52270 mic preamps/eQs and a pair of
empirical Labs distressors for compression.
came in just for overdubs. My
guitar was going into two tweed
Deluxe replicas that my friend
J.J. built for me. He collects
new-old-stock parts [NOS], and
he made me a couple of tweed
Deluxe clones that have new
parts for everything that could
break down, and everything
that won’t break down is old.
Did you track everything live
in the same room, with amps
in isolation rooms?
Yep, it was the three of us—me,
Daniel, and Ira. Doug [Gillard]
Are those your go-to amps
now, or were those just what
you happened to use this time?
My go-to amp is a ’ 65 Fender
Deluxe Reverb reissue with a
Jensen Special Design speaker.
The Jensen speaker is important,
because the speaker the Deluxe
comes with is pretty brittle. I
usually use a THD Hot Plate,
too, to tame it down so I can
really listen to what it sounds like
without it hurting—because I
do like a pretty hyped-up Fender
sound. With an AC30 it’s impos-
sible to get the right tone with-
out blowing everybody off the
stage—you really have to crank
it. My go-to heavy sound is from
a Marshall JCM800 50-watt
head that I’ve had for years. Live,
I always run two Fender-type
amps—or Vox-type or Orange or
Silvertone—flanking a JCM800.
On this last tour in Europe, I
