Any past shoegaze indulgence has been cut clean; this is Nothing operating without excess, every element earning its place. The result is their most purposeful record and probably their best.

Words by Felix Bartlett  | Feb 21, 2026

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As artistic statements go, a band burning themselves out on full-throttle noise collaboration with Full Of Hell, then returning with something as relatively measured as A Short History Of Decay, is a curious move. Yet here we are, and it works. Nothing’s first record for Run For Cover doesn’t arrive as a reinvention so much as a reckoning: tighter, more exposed, and quietly devastating in ways their earlier catalogue rarely managed.

The cover art announces the mood before a note plays: a decaying tooth sitting within an otherwise unremarkable image, easy to miss until you can’t unsee it. The music works the same trick. Never Come Never Morning eases you in on a bed of gentle indie-rock, warm and unhurried, before Cannibal World pulls the rug with jungle-inflected percussion that genuinely catches you off guard. It’s a statement of intent. Anyone filing Nothing neatly under shoegaze hasn’t been paying close enough attention – they draw from too wide a pool for that to hold.

Much of the album operates across two distinct registers, both handled with confidence. The quieter, more skeletal moments carry most of the tension. The Rain Don’t Care is spare and intimate, drifting somewhere between overcast Americana and the kind of understated British indie that builds slowly before briefly cracking open into light, then pulling the curtain back across. Purple Strings is the record’s most unsettling stretch, coiled and uneasy, the kind of track that feels like it’s holding something back right up until it doesn’t.

The bigger, more energised cuts keep their edges deliberately blunted, and are stronger for it. The title track layers melody upon melody until the chorus genuinely lifts, and Essential Tremors closes things out with a surge of fuzzed-out rock energy that unravels satisfyingly into noise before the record ends. It’s not a tidy conclusion, but it’s the right one.

What binds everything together is Domenic Palermo. His voice carries the weight of this record in the most literal sense, the tremors he chose not to conceal in the recording process lend his delivery a fragility that’s hard to shake. This is clearly a personal document, one that revisits difficult ground and sits with it rather than rushing past. Whether it’s processing his relationship with his father on the opener or the broader sense of stocktaking that runs through the lyrics, Palermo sounds like someone who has decided to stop tidying things away.

The result is Nothing’s leanest and most deliberate work. There’s no drift here, no moment that outstays its welcome. Every track pulls its weight, and the whole thing lands with a kind of quiet authority that feels genuinely hard-won.

Verdict: 💀💀💀💀

For fans of: Title Fight, Narrow Head, Soul Blind

‘A Short History Of Decay’ by Nothing is released on 27th February via Run For Cover Records.