Nothing: A Short History Of Decay - X-Ray Smoke (Coloured Vinyl LP)

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. Heavy as a thousand tidal waves. Light as ten teardrops.

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, also of Cloakroom) - singer-songwriter Palermo knew he had the manpower to make the band’s most ambitious record yet.

X-Ray Smoke vinyl version.

1. Never Come Never Morning
2. Cannibal World
3. A Short History of Decay
4. The Rain Don’t Care
5. Purple Strings
6. Toothless Coal
7. Ballet of the Traitor
8. Nerve Scales
9. Essential Tremors