You might find a short history of decay to be a surprisingly listenable affair. Maybe Nothing burned themselves out on unfettered noise-making after 2024’s collaborative release with Full Of Hell, When No Birds Sang. Normalcy must be hard to spring back to after that, even for a shoegaze band formerly in the Relapse Records stable. So while dissecting the ‘eras’ of a band like this seldom bears much, their first outing for Run For Cover suggests a bit of a different outlook for Nothing.
Even so, they aren’t ones to throw a softball outright. The grotesquery of the artwork is the first clue, where the tooth rotten in owner’s mouth is placed as an innocuous part of the image, yet impossible to not divert from. Within, the music is quite similar, actually—melodic, snazzy emo and sedate indie-rock, with a thread of offness tracing all the way through. a short history of decay is informed by its discord and discomfort, but never lets either overshadow the fearless spirit within. In execution, it’s new for Nothing, and it really does suck you in.
Part of that comes from the finality imbued within the album. Frontman Domenic Palermo uses phrases like “a final chapter” and “an exact full-circle moment”, and tales of 160mph desert joyrides with Sonic Ranch’s batshit owner Tony Ranchich hang over like a rockstar mantra made manifest. All the while, it’s worth pointing out this isn’t the intended last Nothing album. Rather, it’s a loop closed on Palermo as a storyteller, coming to terms with a role that began on 2016’s Tired Of Tomorrow. The toll of age and declining health is made apparent in Palermo’s decision to not mask his essential tremors. You can pick out the exposure in his voice, still crystallised into a shoegaze form on cannibal world and toothless coal, but notably more worn. And with never come never morning opening the album as Palermo dredges up memories of his abusive father, there’s a clear vision to be as unmasked as possible.
At the same time, a short history of decay flows with closure and comfort. It’s a less burdened listen next to almost all of Nothing’s catalogue thanks to the fug of purer shoegaze clearing, exemplified in both forms straight away. never come never morning is small, excellently balanced indie-rock with a round bass tone, a crisp drum crack and soft, washed-out strings as finish. Immediately after, cannibal world is awash with emo touchstones that are so full of life, pumped up even further by its breakbeat percussion as an inspired one-off feature.
The rest of the album slots broadly into one of those camps, albeit with their own individualising touches. The more noteworthy cases are found in the former. the rain don’t care is surprisingly barebones and straightforward, just a few thicker reverberations away from an early-day Coldplay song. Next to it, purple strings really explores the uncanny tension possible from Nothing in their exact current state, as it quivers and fractures beneath the skin, ready to fully gnaw through itself. The fuller, emo-adjacent cuts, meanwhile, keep their strangeness more understated, though that in itself can give them more to work with. You get instances like the title track with a chorus empowered by a suite of uber-melodies, or the ‘90s fuzz-rock of the closer essential tremors, effectively hammering out a Weezer song from Nothing’s typical unfriendliness.
All the while, a short history of decay sports its creators’ tightest form to date, and really makes the most of it. Any past shoegazing chaff has been ruthlessly cut out; this is as purposeful as a band like this gets. It’s also no surprise, then, that it’s probably Nothing’s best, or at the very least, the one that carries itself in that way. In positioning a short history of decay as the culmination of a decade’s worth of music, it becomes the necessary exhale, still wary of what’s to come, but free of encumbrances. That’s a great place to be for this band.
For fans of: Title Fight, Narrow Head, Soul Blind
‘a short history of decay’ by Nothing is released on 27th February on Run For Cover Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
