Dance on the Blacktop
NOTHING’s third full-length recording, Dance On The Blacktop, is the next chapter in the band’s tumultuous story and like its predecessors, pulls from all corners of life with a focus on the bleak and despairing. Captured by renowned producer John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Kurt Vile) at Dreamland Studio in Woodstock, NY, Dance On The Blacktop is a stirring collection of songs accentuating the band’s love for all sounds 90s from both sides of the pond; from alternative rock and shoegaze to the realms of pop and post-punk. Across the course of 45 minutes, NOTHING weave together nine tales of heightened confusion, anxiety, paranoia, depression and chronic pain juxtaposed against angelic yet apocalyptic, reverberating walls of shimmering sound. Dance On The Black Top is a fervent, emotional tour-de-force, the sound of a band at the peak of their individuality.
On their third album, the Philadelphia shoegaze band’s tried-and-true arrangements are not terribly original, but they are deeply felt.
Ariana Grande illustrates once again that she is an unparalleled pop chameleon on Sweetener, while KIN splits the difference between late-period Mogwai and the band’s previous film work, and Midori Takada & Lafawndah pair up for the tightly conceived and elegantly performed Le Renard Bleu. Plus Interpol, The Lemon…
Then there is NOTHING, the bracingly loud Philadelphia band, which amassed a following with 2014’s Guilty of Everything and has become a reliably formidable exception to the rule.
On Dance On the Blacktop, Nothing burrow into the filth and double down on the harsher elements of their sound, with mixed results.
To begin, the band is called Nothing. There's a heavy signifier, all on its lonesome. It's a big name and small name, all in the same
Nothing take their shoegaze into overdrive in mystifying ways for our review of the dense but smart record 'Dance On The Blacktop'