On their fourth record, Dominick Palermo leads his dream-pop shoegaze band in a claustrophobic album about his upbringing, and how his music career has brought hope and horror in equal measure.
Dominick Palermo formed Nothing to save himself; four albums in, it seems clear nothing can. The Philadelphia/New York frontman is locked in a perpetual battle with his own self-mythology. Palermo often embraces his abrasive reputation, reclaiming his two-year stint in prison by naming an album after jailhouse jargon and openly discussing his drug and alcohol use in interviews. But as the march of album cycles charged forward, the punk-turned-shoegazer more often expressed exhaustion with facile interpretations of his tortured narrative, the way performing one’s own trauma night after night can lead to complete detachment. Yet, with blind faith, he continues to return to the dark well of his subconscious, turning over the “lingering black cloud” that’s remained past their first three records’ hazy catharsis. The Great Dismal, their fourth record, is an existential commentary on Nothing’s career—a reflection on Palermo’s hometown, his upbringing, and how his music career has brought hope and horror in equal measure.
Beneath the poetic remove of Nothing’s lyrics, there’s a leering sense of realism. For those voyeuristically drawn in by the ghosts of Palermo’s violent past, songs like 2018’s “Blue Line Baby” shaded in its darker colors with concrete details, names, locations. There are specifics on The Great Dismal, too, but they largely draw from a more recent past—the disorientation of endless touring, of finding a bar in Shibuya, Tokyo that feels like home. But those challenges, understandably, feel a bit removed. The band instead finds more success when Palermo waxes philosophical: “Existence hurts existence,” he sings over the album’s shiniest riffs on “Famine Asylum.” It’s an aptly dreary take on Sartre—allegedly the first lines Palermo wrote for the album—and it stands in as a thesis statement for the record. There’s a resilience buried in that declaration, too, as if the act of living is itself a victory over death: “It’s a marvel that my shell has kept its shape,” he sings coyly on “Catch a Fade.” After multiple close calls with oblivion, Palermo finds something like awe in the quotidian drudgery of existence.
Nothing has toed the line between the sharp melodies of their hardcore roots and more delicate swirls of dream-pop and shoegaze, pivoting between the two as their collaborators see fit. On 2018’s Dance on the Blacktop, they took their cues from the sludge savant John Agnello, layering dense guitars and nestling Palermo’s inner lyrical torment within quiet-loud dynamics. For The Great Dismal, they’ve returned to emo stalwart Will Yip, who produced their glassy and gorgeous 2016 record Tired Of Tomorrow. And while Yip’s presence is evident in the record’s spacious compositions—the echoing snap of the drums on “Bernie Sanders,” the ambient cloud of reverb that lingers over “Blue Mecca”—it’s a more hesitant, claustrophobic record than their previous collaboration. Where Tired of Tomorrow began with a fury of cymbal crashes, opener “A Fabricated Life” casts a dense fog over the record from the outset, driven by a single guitar and Palermo’s whispered vocals, percussion never entering the equation. It’s a symbolic gesture, one that reinforces that Nothing is, at the end of the day, Palermo’s voice alone.
As if to drive Palermo’s singular vision home, The Great Dismal sees the biggest lineup change of any Nothing record since the band’s inception. Founding bassist Nick Bassett, of Whirr and Deafheaven, as well as founding vocalist and guitarist Brandon Setta, have both departed the band. In their place, Jesus Piece’s Aaron Heard and Cloakroom’s Doyle Martin step in to fill their respective voids. It’s a subtle but marked shift, lending the dulled weight of Martin’s opiated vocal harmonies to “Catch a Fade” and “Blue Mecca.” And despite Palermo’s recent relocation to New York, Philadelphia makes itself known on the album, with Alex G adding his lilting vocal affectation to “April Ha Ha.” It’s a markedly gentler sound from Nothing, an anesthetized grunge that mirrors their relentless gloom. It’s a logical progression for the band, but it’s hard not to miss their duality, their moments of ragged hardcore intensity; the crisper edges of “Ask the Rusk”’s opening riff are a welcome shot of adrenaline.
Though Nothing is cut from the somnambulant swirls of UK groups like the Smiths and Cocteau Twins, they’ve distilled their critiques into a distinctly American frustration. The Great Dismal takes its name from a giant swamp along the southeastern American coast, what Palermo refers to as a “brilliant natural trap” where only the murkiest survive. The album features one sample, a manic ode to shopping taken from a mall infomercial, and its eerie enthusiasm speaks to the capitalistic hedonism Nothing seems unable to escape. Nothing has established their voice by transforming that anxiety into languid, slanted harmonies. The Great Dismal takes stock of their career, finding vaporous beauty in shrugging off their inner demons.
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