NOTHING hit us with new video “You Wind Me Up” off their recent highly acclaimed album, Dance On The Blacktop. The video, directed by notorious visual and meme artist Teenage Stepdad, debuted over at Juxtapoz.
Just before the band went into the studio to record, frontman Domenic Palermo hit up visual artist, Teenage Stepdad with the single which he explains “struck me immediately with the visuals that would ultimately become the video I made. But at first I just played it over and over. In the car, in my bedroom studio, dancing with my wife and kids. Honestly, I think I was hoping another idea would come to me, because I had no idea how I was going to pull off what I saw in my head that first listen.
The van in the video became a metaphor for my bedroom studio as I chased my muse and watched the world outside my window drift further away. Artistic endeavor, while often thrilling, can also be incredibly isolating, and I think the video ended up reflecting a lot of that push and pull. Hopefully people can relate in their own way.
Eventually I met up with the band in a tiny, van-sized green room in Phoenix to record them and insert them into the piece. They were in the midst of their tour, road-weary and tired, home a memory in their rear-view mirror, but still ready to make some art. It felt very fitting. I’m grateful to have lived so closely with this song over the course of a couple months, and to have some small association with such a beautiful record.”
Dance On The Blacktop pulls from all corners of life in its contents. Stories of self loathing, self destruction, and a general disdain for humanity and its, “insignificant” role in Palermo’s vision of the universe are met with his poised amusement and tranquil hysteria being one himself. All of this told through the eyes of a recently diagnosed Palermosuggesting he is dealing with the early stages of CTE, a neurodegenerative disease found in people with serious head injuries. Palermo spews songs of heightened confusion, anxiety, paranoia, depression, and chronic battles with physical pain- a result of his unstable past and more recent illness. These themes, spoken in a lush angelic language are juxtaposed against the band’s now signature apocalyptic, reverberating wall of shimmering sound.
NOTHING sought out celebrated producer John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr, Breeders, Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile) to help accentuate the band’s love for all sounds 90s, from rock to shoegaze to pop realms and on both sides of the pond.