Nothing - Tired of Everything: unease and guitars in the 2010s

The worldwide success in 2014 of their debut album “Guilty Of Everything” put Nothing at the center of attention on the nu-shoegaze scene. Blending darkwave echoes, guitar feedback, a melancholic streak, epic song structures and existential unease, the Philadelphia quartet returns two years after that breakthrough to release, again on Relapse Records, the second chapter of their discography, enriched along the way by some delightful EPs and splits.

A conversation, constantly balanced between doom and irony, with the two singers/guitarists Domenic “Nicky” Palermo and Brandon Setta, allows us to get to know the American band better and to introduce their much-anticipated “Tired Of Tomorrow.”

Nicky, I'd like to start with you, since you're recognized as the band's leader: tell us about your musical roots. Which albums would you consider essential to your musical education?

Domenic: In the '80s I listened to the Smiths a lot, and I often found myself staring at my brother as he mimicked Johnny Marr on guitar. In particular, I loved “Strangeways, Here We Come.”

D: From the early '90s I could mention Slowdive's “Souvlaki”.

And indeed the shoegaze references in your songwriting are quite evident, to say the least…

D: Then I'd say Elliott Smith's “XO”, Misfits' “Walk Among Us” and Oasis' “What's The Story”.

Well, I'd say the right doses of aggression and melody, exactly what you find on your records. Tell us a bit about your early musical experiences: you played in hardcore-punk-leaning bands like Horror Show and XO Skeletons…

D: When I was very young, I usually channeled anger and aggression to deal with everything that wasn't going right in my life. So the sound that came out of the bands I played in was always pretty harsh and direct.

Once I grew up, I found myself less angry and, above all, a bit tired of leaning on certain clichés. I think the evolution of my music, looked at over time, reflects exactly that personal evolution.

After your early musical experiences you had some trouble with the law. I don't want to dwell on that, since I imagine everyone asks you about it often. I'd just like to know how much the time you spent in prison shaped the writing of the first tracks you recorded with Nothing. Through the title of your debut album, “Guilty Of Everything”, you almost seem to want to publicly take on all your responsibilities…

D: Nothing's material is definitely inspired by what happens in our lives. Think about it, I rarely pick up a guitar unless I'm going through a period of crisis.

So yes, the songs that ended up on “Guilty Of Everything” are the direct result of my state of mind, they were strongly inspired by the events that took place during that period.

Then you met Brandon Setta…

Brandon: Domenic and I met at a venue in Philadelphia, the city where we still live, during a night dedicated to the Smiths.

At the time I wasn't drinking yet, I was pretty sober. I joined the band right away, starting the very next day, and within a week I was already an alcoholic!

And amid this flood of alcohol, how does your songwriting process take shape?

B: We're in the habit of jotting down ideas on our own. Then we get together and almost always develop them together, build them up, each adding our own contribution. Basically, someone has a riff, or part of a song, and we start from there.

I imagine the two of you have pretty similar musical tastes…

B: Yeah, actually, Domenic and I do have fairly similar musical tastes. And generally speaking, there's a certain type of band neither of us likes.

And your surnames clearly betray Italian origins…

B: Yeah, Palermo and Setta, we're both of Italian descent, even though unfortunately we don't speak the language.

D: In my case, my roots are on that beautiful island called Sicily. Well… Italians do it better, right?

Nothing are a shoegaze band, one that's actually softening its sound these days, and yet you record for a label that's usually active in completely different territory…

B: This has actually happened to us on a couple of occasions already. A few years back we had an opportunity with A389, a label that operates mainly in metal-hardcore territory, and they put out one of our early EPs.

We come from those sonic territories, that's really the kind of background we have, so we were happy to get an opportunity like that.

How did it turn out?

B: A389 released our mini-album “Downward Years To Come” and the response was very positive. Not long after, the same thing happened with Relapse Records, another label that's traditionally part of that same circuit. Relapse released “Guilty Of Everything” in 2014, our first album.

We had no idea how it would go, recording for a fairly major label belonging to that kind of imagery, especially since our sound was starting to take a different shape in the meantime.

Maybe a lot of "metalheads" weren't too thrilled about our presence there, I don't know. Anyway, most of the Relapse catalogue is still decidedly "heavy". The new album, “Tired Of Tomorrow”, was originally supposed to come out on another label, but due to a series of setbacks it ended up being released by Relapse again: both we and they are very happy about that.

From my point of view, Nothing today are bringing the shoegaze approach into the present, the same way, say, Canada's Metz are updating hardcore-grunge. It feels like you look to the past in order to write contemporary music, free of any nostalgic streak…

D: Very simply, we're just focused on playing, writing and recording the music we like best. There's no calculation involved, no other reasoning behind it.

I couldn't tell you what label to put on what we do, but it's definitely the result of everything we listen to, everything we don't listen to, and everything we've never even heard of.

If it seems like we play better than anyone else, it's because there's honesty in what we do. Whereas out there, there's always a whole lot of crap.

Can you reveal any combination of effects, guitars and amplifiers you used to get your sound?

B: we used a bunch of different solutions to get the sonic spectrum you can hear on our records. We used tons of pedals, amps and guitars to pull off all the layers of sound you can hear.

I would rather encourage every guitarist to search for that ideal combination of amps and effects that represents the sound they're going for, and work hard to keep improving it. And to use whatever guitar looks super cool, so you can impress all the girls!

Is there any interesting up-and-coming band in the Philadelphia area you'd like to point us to?

D: Honestly, I've been listening exclusively to Chet Baker.

There's no one blowing our minds right now around Philadelphia.

Or maybe we just don't like anyone anywhere.

How did your first European tour in 2014 go?

B: A lot of the live clubs where we ended up playing turn into discos afterwards and stay open all night, so we often found ourselves wrecked the next morning from the fallout of those never-ending parties.

It sounds fun from the outside: touring around the most beautiful cities in Europe, playing shows and staying out late...

B: Sometimes, though, the situations were annoying, grey and cold.

If I remember correctly, we should have also taken a selfie together...

Yes, the night you played in Rome, at the Quirinetta, just steps from the Trevi Fountain, nice location, right?

B: Well, Italy is always damn cool!

"Guilty Of Everything" was well received in Italy by both critics and audiences. But music doesn't sell big numbers anymore. Do you know how many copies it's sold worldwide so far?

D: We should be around seventy thousand copies.

I'm hoping that with “Tired Of Tomorrow” we can reach two hundred thousand. That's the goal.

Nothing's bassist, Nick Bassett, plays with Whirr, with whom you also shared a split, you started the parallel project Death Of Lovers, more geared towards darkwave, you're quite prolific in general…

B: We've always cultivated a lot of interests, we look around, we play with people we like, side projects serve all of us, they let us express ourselves in different directions, each in his own way.

D: even just to try and scrape together a couple more dollars…

Speaking of Nick Bassett, I didn't spot him in some of the new promo photos: I was afraid he'd left the band!

B: No, don't worry, it's just that at the time we were too broke to afford flying all the way to Oakland to see him.

So we thought we'd just take some shots with the two best-looking members of the band, plus Kyle (the drummer, ed.).

"Tired Of Tomorrow" arrives at the end of a rather turbulent period, especially for Domenic, new run-ins with the law, a couple of fights, that kind of thing…

D: Yes, but there's something new inside.

Very true, it's a much more varied record compared to the previous one, alongside electrically epic tracks, the result of your established noise-shoegaze approach, this time we even find three ballads, and even a closing track built entirely around piano and strings…

B: "Tired Of Tomorrow" represents an important extension of our musical vision, we worked to build new solutions, while still staying true to a certain continuity with the past.

Our intention was to build a sound that felt more "ours," to create a "progressive record."

Our sound is constantly mutating, and it has been since the very start of the Nothing adventure: I hope it can keep evolving and expanding in the future too.

To wrap up, give us the title of the record you're currently on heavy rotation with…

B: I'm just listening to "Holocaust" by Big Star on repeat, and I'm just sitting here waiting for this life to end…

This is how the meeting with the two singers/guitarists of the Philadelphia band comes to an end.

Now they'll have to tackle the promotion of "Tired Of Tomorrow": over thirty dates are already scheduled across North America between May and July. Then, probably, it'll be Europe again…

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