When I was a kid, the thing I wanted to do the most was make an album,” says Do Nothing’s vocalist Chris Bailey when we meet at his local cafe. It’s a wet, muggy day in Nottingham. We’re seated on a damp bench among some brazen pigeons. On paper, Bailey, 28, has everything he’d hoped for – but as the adage goes, all that glitters isn’t gold. “You get so jaded with each level that you go up, that you end up holding the record you made and feeling nothing.”
The Nottingham four-piece, completed by Kasper Sandstrøm (guitar), Charlie Howarth (bass) and Andy Harrison (drums), first arrived on the scene with their Maccabees-esque “Handshakes” in 2018. Then came two elegant EPs (2020’s Zero Dollar Bill and 2021’s Glueland EP), in which Bailey’s distinctive, supple vocals spearhead moody melodies. These are swarmed with warm and wonky post-punk. The band, who’ve “known each other for forever and ever,” are influenced by everyone from Tom Waits to Texan band Spoon and (Bailey’s favourite) Simon and Garfunkel. It all feeds into the band’s long-awaited debut album, Snake Sideways, a graceful and refined 10-track showpiece of detailed melancholia. The album might sound seamless, but the process was not. “I’m not going to dress it up, today didn’t go so well,” sings Bailey in the band’s first single in two years, “Happy Feet”. “That’s kind of how every day was,” he tells me. “It was a huge amount of stress.”
