“It’s okay not to do things perfectly immediately, or not to do things perfectly at all.” – Chris Bailey
Both Chris and Kasper are eager for ‘Snake Sideways’ not to be viewed as an album specified by author’s block, or by one particular situation, however rather about the method we think of dilemmas and how we eventually leave them. “Especially with the end, it doesn’t feel like, ‘OK well, he’s outlined all these problems and the record’s over,’” Kasper says. “The whole record is trying to fix it and not being too fucking morose about the whole thing, because what’s the point,” concurs Chris. “It’s OK not to do things perfectly immediately, or not to do things perfectly at all. Trying really hard, and doing something, is worth it in itself.”
It’s a subtle widening of viewpoint that’s mirrored in other places on the album; compositionally, there’s been a modification too. It’s a sonic shift that appears a natural reaction to the puritanical impulses of post-punk – a reducing far from angularity and sparsity, and back towards tune and charm. “If you start off doing something a bit minimal and you want to go somewhere, then the natural thing is to do a bit more, right?” Chris recommends. “I don’t think it was a pointed effort to get away from the other stuff, I think it’s more that we naturally started going in a different direction and then we just followed it, rather than fighting it.”
On tracks like opener ‘Nerve’, Chris hardly depends on his sprechgesang of old, getting into a remarkably clear, tuneful voice. However he’s clear that it’s not a binary option in between the 2. “I don’t see it as, ‘I don’t do that stuff anymore’, because it’s all still open,” he says. “Ideally I’d like to be able to do both, rather than move away from one and never do it again.” He stops to believe. “I’m interested to see what happens. I wonder if it will come full circle, and everybody will go back to yelling again. I don’t know…”
Where frequently a band’s launching album discovers them showing up the volume on their calling cards, leaning into the important things that make them, well, them, Do Nothing have actually rather picked to muddy the waters, burrowing away into tones of grey. In doing so, they’ve made something completely more human rather: an album that appears all at once unmoored from reality and yet sounding with a total fact. Out of a troubled journey, Do Nothing have actually emerged with a file of the human experience – taking a look at it sideways, sure, however triumphing.
‘Snake Sideways’ is out now by means of The Orchard.
