"Sorry it's loud, I'm at Chuck E. Cheese's. It's my favorite pizza."
This is what I love about Nothing: Last time I interviewed frontman Dominic Palermo he was at the liquor store in the middle of the afternoon. This time he's surrounded by animatronic animals and a ball pit. This is a handy, if hilarious, example of the contradictions that make the Philadelphia band enrapturing. Nothing is equal parts heaviness and light, belligerence and fun, chaotic and calculated. They also worship at the altar of Fender's Twin Reverb amplifier, which means we are brethren on a spiritual level. But the thing that keeps me coming back to their debut album Guilty of Everything — and back for interviews — is the wonderful tangle of contradictions at the very heart of the recordings.
The biggest, most obvious contradiction is that Nothing is signed to the legendary extreme metal label Relapse Records. Nothing is not a metal band. They're heavy as hell and employ sonic density that will rumble your innards and rattle your dome, sure. But they're not a metal band. The easy tag would be "shoegaze," but that brings with it implications of twee knob-twiddlers staring at their navels — Nothing may have its share of ephemeral beauty and sweeping crescendos, but self-involved wimp rock this is not. "Punk rock" hits the attitude and explains the level of danger and sense of nihilism, but doesn't quite capture the sound. Nothing is defined by all of these terms and none of them.
"There's been a review here and there, a lazy writer here and there, that try to connect with [Relapse Records] and what's expected from that aspect," says Palermo. "A lot of the press that we get, they're used to getting bands from Relapse, and lazy writers think they should compare it to other Relapse bands when it is really its own thing."
Your author is, to borrow a phrase, guilty of everything in this regard. Relapse is on the short list of labels with promos I'm always willing to try out — it's an easy and reliable source of interesting, engaging and downright challenging listening. Like shooting fish in a barrel, really. But Relapse never name-drops My Bloody Valentine. Or Slowdive. Or Hum. These bands inhabit a side of my brain that Relapse bands never touch. The cognitive dissonance in that email was like chum in the water. I took the bait and have been hooked ever since. And I wasn't the only one — Rolling Stone, Spin, Decibel and Fader have all sung the band's praises. Nothing shows have been selling out across the country.
"It's a nice eclectic mix of everybody that's into music, which is really comforting for us," says Palermo. "We get a lot of punk-rock kids, a lot of hardcore kids, indie-rock kids, metalheads. Normal — like, really normal — people too. It's pretty rad."
And it's not just rad for the band — it's rad for the listeners as well. Hell, I'd say that it's rad for the entirety of music. As music has stratified in the 21st century, as we've splintered off into our little sub-cults worshipping tiny sub-genres, we as a culture are losing something important. We are losing the interactions, the cultural cross-pollination that makes for vibrant scenes and vibrant music.
When you spend the majority of your waking hours following the weird avalanche of irrelevance that passes for music press these days — and you're on the receiving end of promo spam from every crap-filled corner of the industry — it's tough not think that we're all doomed to a very staid, segmented future. But then an album like Guilty of Everything comes along and kicks that whole outlook in the teeth. Nothing is a band that is difficult to nail down but easy to love: the exact opposite of what is happening in the vast majority of records on the shelves.
"It's rad being able to do what we want to do and not really have to worry about it," says Palermo.
Hear, hear.
Email Music@nashvillescene.com.
