Shoegaze is often dismissed as a genre of music for whispy, college-aged boys with an ingrained sense of entitlement and little more life experience than having listened to The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” more than anyone else in their dormitory. As accurate as that depiction may actually be, it’s markedly out of tune with the reality that Philadephia’s Nothing is grounded in.
Nothing is a sonic life preserver and musical project fronted by Domenic “Nicky” Palermo, and backed by drummer Kyle Kimball, guitarist Doyle Martin of Cloakroom, and Jesus Piece’s Aaron Heard on bass. Domenic started Nothing after being released from prison early, having served only two years of a seven-year sentence for attempted murder resulting from his stabbing of a man. Before going to prison, Domenic was a member of the hardcore band Horror Show who had a few releases on Jacob Bannon’s Deathwish before breaking up. The man that Domenic stabbed was a member of a rival hardcore band. Domenic’s prison sentence seemed to be a natural outgrowth of his lifestyle at the time as and there is apparently more overlap between the punk scene and the criminal underworld in Phillidelphia than there is in other parts of the country. Before the incident that put him behind bars, Domenic had already begun shifting away from the Philadelphia hardcore scene he came up in, often finding himself listening to My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive rather than Madball or American Nightmare while transporting drugs around the city. An absurd scenario he has recounted multiple times in interviews over the years.
Following his release from prison, Domenic slowly started to put his life back together while dismantling his old habits as a drug dealer and hustler. It’s at this point that he started Nothing, a hard-biting, post-hardcore band that experimented with the pedal-switching, shadow-tinted fuzz inherent in the guitar work of The Jesus and Mary Chain, the sharp, jangly melodicism of Swervedriver, and the crystalline, sonic ennui of Slowdive’s Souvlaki.
Nothing has helped to sustain Domenic ever since its formation, giving him the perseverance to weather a string of life-altering mishaps; such as being mugged and having his skull fractured outside a show in Oakland, being diagnosed with a potentially life-shortening brain disorder (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)), and being briefly signed to Collect Records, the shell label of pharma bro Martin Shkreli (yeah, the guy who hiked the price of the AIDS drug Daraprim from $13 to $750 a pill, because, capitalism).
In addition to managing the growing success of his band, Domenic has become an advocate for the incarcerated, with the release of Nothing’s 2018 album Dance on the Blacktop doubling as a charitable event for the Pennsylvania Prison Society, a non-profit that works for inmates’ rights. He also attempts to use his position in the Philly scene to educate young people about the consequences of violent crime and drug trafficking, hoping to reach young people before they enter the revolving meatgrinder of the US penial system, an institution that thrives on the failure of those it is charged with rehabilitating.
Given the experiences that Domenic’s band draws from and the reality it speaks to, it’s not hard to understand why so many derivative an extraordinary amount of meaning from Nothing’s body of work. They’ve released three EPs and four LPs, all of the latter with Relapse. Their latest LP The Great Dismal is out today (you can read our review here)! To celebrate the new album, we’ve assembled a quick primer on Nothing’s back-catalog of EPs and LPs which you can check out below.
Poshlost demo EP (Like Glue) 2011
The Poshlost demo was the first album Domenic release as Nothing when the band was essentially a solo project. Over its nearly twenty minute run time, Domenic experiments with a variety of sounds and influences, with a distinct thread of The Cure’s Pornography running through its core and informing the blustery jangle of its melancholic guitar work.
Suns and Lovers EP (Big Love) 2012
The Suns and Lovers EP sees Nothing expanding the band’s repertoire, embracing more of the honey-fuzz, dream pop of early Cocteau Twins. The album exhibits the band building into their sound a more resilient, pop-forward quality that would reemerge in darker renditions on later releases. The title track stands as one of the lighter, more pleasant, and accessible songs of their entire catalog.
Downward Years to Come EP (A389) 2012
It’s on Downward Years to Come that we start to see the group’s characteristic aggressive guitar work and searing, star-light feedback makes its first appearance. For this release, the line-up of the band had more or less solidified and their cohesion is evident from the rolling moan and ring of “Downward Years to Come” and the Velvet plunge of “If Only.” This would be their final self-released album before signing with Relapse and is an excellent primer for the aesthetic that would take shape on their debut LP.
Guilty of Everything (Relapse) 2014
Nothing’s debut LP Guilty of Everything was well-received upon release, even if its approach to shoegaze and post-rock confounded many critics at the time, all of whom seemed to find it incomprehensible that a band could combine the leaning, lock-jawed shove of aggressively forward-looking bands like Quicksand with the feathery, blushing indie rock of Red House Painters, or the feedback nesting glow of Slowdive. It’s not recommended that you hunt down any of the reviews for this release as they’re all pretty worm-brained (despite being overwhelmingly positive!), it’s better just to allow the folding, bitter-sweet whir of “Hymn to the Pillory,” the breathy, jangle-crush of “Get Well” and the bright, psychedelic cycling of “Somersault” wash over you and make up your own mind about the release.
Tired of Tomorrow (Relapse) 2016
Tired of Tomorrow is Nothing’s second LP, an album that succeeded in maintaining the momentum of its predecessor while incorporating more forward elements of emo and post-hardcore, particularly on the deep feeling and hooky feedback den “Vertigo Flowers,” and the lightly corrosive, adulation addiction “ACD.” There are also moments where the band enters dark pop terrain such as on “Nineteen Ninety Heaven,” and tries their hand at alternative rock on the Alice in Chains bound “Curse Of the Sun.” Tired of Tomorrow showed Nothing expanding on the template of their first LP in ways that only improved their sound and helped pave the way for the triumphs of their next record, Dance on the Blacktop. It is also the first album that Nothing did in collaboration with Nick Bassett of Whirr (a band some of you may remember from a certain Twitter controversy).
Dance on the Blacktop (Relapse) 2018
As has been recounted countless times, Dance on the Blacktop is a euphemism for a prison yard brawl, an overt signal to Nothing’s audience that there is a part of Domenic that never left the Garden State Penitentiary where he served 21 months of his sentence. It’s a bleaker album than any other in the band’s catalog up to this point, darker and more earnest as well. Beginning with the funeral-fire dirge of “Zero Day” and continuing into the felt-lined, blossoming corpse flower of “Blue Line Baby,” Dance on the Blacktop is an album that feels like it is attempting desperately to hold on to what little stable ground it’s been able to claim for the sake of its own preservation and sanity. This is in many ways their heaviest album, incorporating a thorny, grunge-glossed thump into “Us/We/Are” and fusing a sludgy, stoner-rock groove to the flesh of the heat-withered “I Hate Flowers.” This is far from a one-note album though, as it also features one of the band’s quietest songs, the languid drift of “The Carpenter’s Son.”
How Nothing’s continued interest in quiet/LOUD dynamics and increasingly morbid preoccupations will manifest on their brand new album The Great Dismal have yet to be identified, tagged, and logged in critical consensus. You can read our review here, or you can buy it at the link below and make up your own mind (never let critics tell you how to feel).
Photo by Nothing.
Get a copy of The Great Dismal here.
Explore Nothing’s back-catalog here.
