Dance On The Blacktop is the third album by Nothing, the American indie shoegaze band fronted by Domenic Palermo and Brandon Setta alongside Kyle Kimball and Nick Bassett when the album came out in 2018, since when singer/guitarist Brandon Setta and Keyboardist Nick Bassett both quit the band, making this the last album the band recorded with most of the original line up. The album was produced by John Agnello at Dreamland in Woodstock New York.
The album opens with Zero Day a goth metal song with a bit of the quiet loud thing going on, the vocals seem almost buried in the mix making them a touch indistinct, but they work on a textural level.
Blue Line Baby has them searching to find the holy place among the shoegaze gentle indie rock as thy try to climb inside her mind. The short acoustic part will pull at your heartstrings.
You Wind Me Up should be directed to the art director on this album who chose to write all the song titles on the back of the cd in Dark Grey on a light grey background, making them almost unreadable, let alone the people actually winding them up, to make a gauzy fey indie song like this, gnawing at the voices in their heads.
Plastic Migraine is I guess what you call the sort of fake migraine you pull to get out of going to work when a colleague you don't like is in charge. As they sing about having a headache as they haven't had enough caffeine, so they are going cold turkey once again.
Us/We/Are is questioning pronouns over a tune reminiscent of Creep by Radiohead, as they question who they are and how they fit in as everything is red.
Hail On Palace Pier feels full of regrets for how your being treated walking down that pier, not looking like every other dweeb around. Will you sing songs and march off to war, or do you want a better life, this feels rather wistful.
I Hate The Flowers sadly doesn't sound like John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett had anything to do with this song, with floaty vocals over grinding guitars, whose dynamics open out a bit.
The Carpenters Son is super slow like Her Name Is Calla, that this song is always going to explode isn't in doubt it's just when, sitting on a porch dreaming like Bobby Zimmerman that he won't end up in the family business, even if in later life you may wish you had. As you lay back taking in the atmospherics whiling the days away.
Hope (Is Just Another Word With A Hole In It) is a great song title, the guitars wail and whine away the pain of finding it hard to Hope for better times, when you look around you at what's going on, even before the pandemic hit. Nothing conjure up a febrile world closing in on them, as they try to find a way to have fun dancing on the tarmac once more as the acoustic guitar comes in and they talk about a Thousand Faces and they don't mean the band of that name as the guitars cascade down to close the album.
Find out more at https://www.relapse.com/products/nothing-dance-on-the-blacktop-cd?_pos=5&_sid=5b9146c00&_ss=r https://nothing.bandcamp.com/album/dance-on-the-blacktop https://www.facebook.com/BANDOFNOTHING https://www.bandofnothing.com/
