From Megan Seling’s Interrogation of Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws:

For Nada Surf to survive for 15 years, there’s maybe some luck working.

Our staying together is a funny thing. Usually the answer to the question is: “Oh, well because we’re such good friends, we live near each other, and the shows have always been great.” And that’s all true, but the other reason I think we’ve stayed together is if we dissolve the group, what would come next? We would have to form another band with the explicit intent to do well, since we don’t have jobs anymore. Nada Surf was formed in the luxury of hobbydom. And that’s the best way to play, when you don’t need it to work, you just need it to be enjoyable. So we could stay together or find real jobs. I think laziness is what kept the group together.

From Bug in the Bassbin by Donte Parks:

There are some within the electronic music community that write off Club Pop as just some “hipster shit,” but in all fairness, Club Pop has possibly the broadest ambition of any regular night in Seattle, booking both DJs and bands to nudge their crowd into a sweaty fervor. Yes, the 18+ age range makes it a training ground for future Cha Cha regulars, but so what? Many of Club Pop’s bands haven’t broken big enough to play elsewhere, and many of the DJs have their fingers on the pulse of where electronic music is going, making Club Pop a glimpse into the future of the form. If you’ve chosen to ignore it, you’re doing yourself a disservice. For this edition they’ve got DFA’s Tim Sweeney, who not only killed it with his last Seattle appearance, but does so with every installment of his WNYU radio show Beats in Space.

From Up & Comings:

The Greyboy Allstars, Busdriver

(Neumo’s) Out of the South Central L.A. Blowed Crew, Busdriver has carved a frenetic hiphop niche. His songs are a Masterpiece Ghettotech Theatre and he plays a speed-reading auctioneer. His Epitaph Records release of RoadKillOvercoat was produced by DJ Nobody and Boom Bip. Busdriver’s flows are precise and freely associative. Topics cut quickly from casting agents, cowgirls, oxycodone, and suicide to brunch. “In the Polaroid at a get together/Wearing a corduroy vest sweater” he “negates the myth of the great black boyfriend.” Busdriver’s spitfire delivery conjugates the grammatical latticework of a sentence like a jazz drummer dices a beat. Content is scattershot, but there’s balance. TRENT MOORMAN