Tired of Tomorrow

Released on 13 May 2016 through Relapse Records, Tired of Tomorrow is the moment Nothing sharpen their shoegaze instincts into something heavier, sadder and strangely luminous. It is also the first album to feature Nick Bassett of Whirr on bass, a subtle but significant shift that adds depth and weight to the band’s already dense palette.

Nothing have always blurred the line between beauty and abrasion, but here the contrast becomes the point. The record’s melodic instincts feel clean and almost classic, yet they’re constantly swallowed by guitars that churn like weather systems. Brandon Stosuy described its sound as “invitingly deep”, and that’s exactly how the album lands: familiar but new, varied but consistent, ambient yet sturdy. It is a record you sink into, whether you mean to or not.

Critically, Tired of Tomorrow was widely admired. It earned a strong critical consensus, with high praise from Drowned in Sound, Exclaim!, musicOMH, NME and Pitchfork, who awarded it 8.0 and placed it at number 48 in their list of the “50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time”. Rough Trade listed it among their Albums of the Year for 2016. What emerges through all this acclaim is a shared sense that Nothing have created a shoegaze album rooted in tradition but unwilling to be trapped by it.

If their debut hinted at potential, Tired of Tomorrow is where Nothing become a force: a band capable of turning emotional exhaustion into widescreen beauty, and making heaviness feel almost airborne.