Track by track: NOTHING - ‘Tired Of Tomorrow’

BS: I wrote the music one night when I was insanely stoned. I just kept adding layers and made a terrible off time drum track with the GarageBand keyboard. Showed it to the guys. It was basically inaudible. The lyrics are about a girl I dated that lived in New York. Needless to say it did not end well.

DP : The lyrics are about how it’s easier being dead.

BS: I had this acoustic song from a project I was gonna do but never did. I showed Nicky this demo I had pretty late into the writing process. The melodies were there and there wasn’t too much work to be done so we just made it into a song. Nicky wrote the lyrics, intro and pre-verse riff, and a quick bridge, and I played a solo pretending like I know how to play the guitar.

DP: I had this melody in my head while I was hiding in a Walmart because I thought some people were following me. As a direct result of the injuries I sustained in Oakland CA, I was suffering from chronic headaches, nauseating vertigo, and fits of paranoia and anxiety all whilst in studio. I was trying to work out vocals for it but had to keep running to the toilet to puke because the room was spinning. It was awful but I was on enough Percocets that I still felt kind of good in the midst.

BS: I went into the back part of a green room somewhere in Europe on the verge of a mental breakdown. I made the main riffs of the song pretty quickly somehow, considering my brain was completely destroyed. I had this other riff from a previous demo and I realized they went together seamlessly so that became the chorus and we scrapped the other song. I had a tooth basically explode in my gums and cause me horrible grief and Nicky wrote the lyrics about a rotting tooth and being a rotten human.

DP: I had written this pretty early on before we left for a tour with Merchandise. I was listening to OK Computer a lot at the time. I remember when that CD came out, it was a really nice time. Seemed like a dream reminiscing so I wanted to write something that complimented that album and that time and keep it dreamy. When Will introduced me to Kylie (Petal) and I heard her voice I knew it had to be there to cover my vocals up.

DP: Kyle (Kimball, drums) mentioned he had a couple riffs he recorded so I allowed his stupid ass to let me make it into an actually good song. I added a bridge and lead and some lyrics about how it’s the Suns fault everyone on earth is alive. Brandon wrote an awful solo for the end and we made another hit. It’s pretty simple that one.

DP: I wrote this in the hospital after I got my ass beat up in Oakland. I was on a mixture of anaesthesia, morphine, and anxiety and pain pills. Same cocktail that killed MJ. I scribbled in a legal pad in between reading Burroughs’ The Soft Machine, nodding in and out. I had the song partially written but with that pad it became a totally different monster. Nick (Bassett) was playing piano in the other room while I was tracking guitars and I would hear him when the song would cut out. I knew we had to add that in right then.

DP: I forced Nick to write a Nothing song with me because I was always curious to see how it would turn out, but he was always too scared that Brandon would get mad. It’s a beautiful tune. Will really killed it here with production too. I wrote it about watching something you love suffer and the inability to make something change.

BS: I had a super lo-fi demo that was the verse riff of this song. Nicky and I were drunk in the studio in the dark trying to force ourselves to sleep and we traded demos on our phones back and forth. We came together on this one a whole lot and built the song. It came pretty easily, I think. I wrote the lyrics to the verses about a messed up night in LA.

DP: I just remember watching Brandon play this lovely guitar part and humming a really stunning melody and thought, “how can I fuck this up totally.” Then came up with the ending to ruin it all.

DP: I’d had this song written on guitar since Guilty Of Everything. I never quite knew how to make it come across until I was in the studio with Nick and he started playing along with me on piano. Immediately I knew that’s how it needed to be, so we worked together and re-worked it and I brought in a string section. The song is about moving around the country, frantically trying to find some sort of salvation or contentment, but, you guessed it! Not.

NOTHING’s new album ‘Tired Of Tomorrow’ is released on 13th May via Relapse.

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