Nothing - a short history of decay (Limited Edition on X-Ray Smoke Vinyl)

“We’re not here to do the right thing. We never have been.” Nothing frontman Domenic 'Nicky' Palermo has never described his band in more succinct terms. Nothing have always been rule-breakers. Shoegaze renegades who’ve rebuilt the stereotypically lightweight genre in their own bloodyknuckled American image. Outlaw poets spilling existential dread on mile-wide canvasses of fuzz and reverb. Breathing in pain and suffering like oxygen, and exhaling those burdens of survival through a singular outpouring of pulverizing volume and ethereal quietude. Beginning as a Philly-born bedroom solo project in 2010, Nothing’s music has always captured the full scale of the human condition, both the blaring anger and the whispering sadness. A Short History of Decay, Nothing’s fifth solo album and first for Run For Cover Records, widens that aperture even further, providing the most hi-def rendering of Nothing to date. The band have never sounded this colossal, never felt this intimate, never been this honest.

A Short History of Decay follows Nothing’s 2020 triumph, The Great Dismal, a dark, steely evolution of the world-weary shoegaze sound they codified on their three previous albums: 2018’s Dance on the Blacktop, 2016’s Tired of Tomorrow, and 2014’s Guilty of Everything. At the time of Dismal’s release, Palermo thought the band might’ve reached its natural conclusion, but then life happened and “the feeling of wanting to do it resurfaced,” he explains. With the strongest arsenal in Nothing’s ever-shifting lineup locked in - guitarist Doyle Martin (Cloakroom), bassist Bobb Bruno (Best Coast), drummer Zachary Jones (MSC, Manslaughter 777), and third guitarist Cam Smith (Ladder To God, Cloakroom) - singer-songwriter Palermo knew he had the manpower to make the band’s most ambitious record yet.

In a broader sense, it’s a record about truth. Rather than cover up the tremors with reverb, Palermo wanted to leave his own bodily degradation uncharacteristically exposed, a reflection of the radical honesty that encapsulates every sound and lyric on the new album. It doesn’t just take risks lyrically, but musically, too. Nothing’s sound has always run the gamut from glistening piano ballads to scorching fuzz firebombs, but this nine-song opus includes the most achingly pretty and cataclysmically insane songs they’ve ever created. Palermo wrote and co-produced the record in close collaboration with Whirr guitarist Nicholas Bassett, a longtime songwriting partner whose expertise helped elevate A Short History of Decay to a tier of sonic grandeur that Nothing had never previously achieved.

With additional production and mixing work from Sonny Diperri (DIIV, Julie) and every other Nothing member fine-tuning their parts, A Short History of Decay resulted in the most evolved musical statement in Nothing’s catalog. Even though, in so many ways, from the personnel changeovers to their advanced sound, Nothing are a vastly different band than they were when they started, Palermo still feels that A Short History of Decay is an uncannily familiar reflection of Nothing’s briney 2014 debut. He calls the new record “a final chapter.” Not the end of Nothing, but the conclusion of a story that began with Guilty of Everything - another album about time, regret, and confronting uncomfortable truths - and now resolves with A Short History of Decay. As much a snapshot of Palermo’s past as it is a leap into Nothing’s future.