Led by founder and only consistent member Domenic ‘Nicky’ Palermo, Nothing are a band simultaneously easy and impossible to pin down. While they can sound like and scan like a thousand other pedal-powered noiseniks, they really are the best at what they do. In Cardiff, that’s underscored by their incendiary opener, July The Fourth: a deep cut, and a perfect way to get things going.
Bearded and resplendently world-weary in a battered cap, like a sort of shoegaze Captain Birdseye, Palermo guides the set with a detached, salt-weathered cool. His dedication to the substance of Nothing for 15-plus years arguably lifts them above just another overdriven guitar band.
Throughout the set immense reverb fills a well-attended room, as the guitars, guided by some seriously stacked pedalboards, blur into each other. Aided by the excellent Doyle Martin – who also leads the sublime fuzz rockers Cloakroom – and Best Coast’s Bobb Bruno on bass, sheets of distortion and occasional industrial beats both crush and soothe.
A mix of newer offerings from the latest album A Short History Of Decay blend perfectly with bombastic favourites. This includes Bent Nail, from landmark album Guilty Of Everything, which emerges as a euphoric peak. And the band really hit a bombastic stride with offerings such as April Ha Ha and the absolutely anthemic Zero Day, from 2018’s Dance On The Blacktop.
Bathed in a candy crimson and chalk-blue light and haze, like a bar band in Twin Peaks, the quiet intensity spreads across the set, guiding the melancholy and the hope infused within Nothing’s music. This culminates as the set builds to a crescendo with new album highlight Never Come Never Morning bringing down the curtain. Nothing may be a bit battered and bruised around the edges, but they still hit all the right trigger points, and long may that continue.
Nothing, Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Wed 15 Apr
words JAMES W ROBERTS photos NOEL GARDNER
