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Giving yourself permission to be creative - Matthew Caws, Nada Surf
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Giving yourself permission to be creative - Matthew Caws, Nada Surf

Attention Engineer Episode 50

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In this conversation, we discuss:

  • how anxiety gets in the way of songwriting

  • the anomaly of artists being financially successful

  • what it’s like listening to the music you made a long time ago

  • how to keep writing interesting material when you’re happily married

  • ageing with your audience – when your existence is a mirror to their years gone by

  • John Cleese’s 90 minute creativity rule


Matthew’s song suggestions:


Matthew Caws has been playing guitar, singing and writing songs in Nada Surf since 1994. He is one half of Minor Alps with Juliana Hatfield. He’s from New York City but currently lives in Cambridge, England. Find out more at nadasurf.com.

Nada Surf’s new EP “Cycle Through” is out now, a companion piece to their 2020 album “Never Not Together”. They’re on tour in the US in November 2021 and Europe and the UK in 2022 – get tickets here.

Find and follow Nada Surf on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.


The Penfriend songs featured in this episode are:

Intro: Cancel Your Hopes
Background: Everything Looks Normal In The Sunshine
Outro: Seashaken

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Penfriend's Letterbox
Penfriend's Letterbox
I'm Laura Kidd, an independent music producer, songwriter and visual artist based in Nottingham, UK, making music as Penfriend (formerly She Makes War and Obey Robots).
My mission is to encourage creativity in others by sharing my artistic process, plus thoughts on the philosophy of creativity.
In my first podcasting era 2019-2021 I interviewed 50 of my favourite artists and comedians for my "Attention Engineer" episodes. I asked nosey questions about creativity, grit and determination and received some surprising answers...
In 2024 I missed podcasting so much I decided to start sharing here in a different way. Subscribe to join me for the next part of this journey!