More about: Do Nothing

Sharp wit, positivity and a lack of self-glorification are all big traits which distinguish Do Nothing from a burgeoning post-punk scene that’s reviving much of the guitar music we’ve grown up with. Whilst many post-punk bands make comments on daily anxieties with a brooding tenacity, Do Nothing slice through all of that with fun tracks like ‘LeBron James’, and now, their new EP, Zero Dollar Bill which came out last week (10 April) via Exact Truth. 

You’ll find a bit of everything in Do Nothing’s catalogue of music – influences from Talking Heads and The Fall, and a tongue-in-cheek approach. We caught up with their enigmatic frontman Chris Bailey to discuss the current crisis and its impact on the industry, podcasts and, of course, their new EP.

Gigwise: So, how did you all meet?

Chris Bailey: We met when we were younger, through school basically. We’ve known each other for fucking years and years. We just played in different versions of bands and stuff, just messing around, and then once school was over we just got together and tried to be in a band and it sort of worked out okay, I guess.

GW: Why did you call yourselves Do Nothing?

CB: I think I saw it on a cap. It took us fucking years to come up with some kind of real name. There were a couple of things. Simon Amstell actually has a stand up special called Do Nothing.

GW: Ah, I love him!

CB: He’s a good lad. So I guess it’s a mixture of things. But, mostly, I saw it written on a cap.

GW: I mean, that’s a good source for a name.

CB: Yeah, pretty good!

GW: Describe your sound in five words.

CB: Daft, rambley, post-punk nonsense.

GW: What’s the best gig you’ve ever played?

CB: Probably when we supported Interpol in Moscow a while ago. That was just a huge venue compared to anything we’d ever played before and they’re one of our musical heroes. We’ve followed them since we were younger and getting the chance to support them was really cool. The gig went as well as we could have hoped for. It was a good experiment in playing a larger stage. It’s good to be thrown in the deep end sometimes, to see if you can swim. So yeah, probably that one!

GW: What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?

CB: I’ve seen Radiohead a few times and they were really great, obviously. If it’s just a little snippet… at Primavera a few years ago I saw Brian Wilson. I don’t know if I saw the whole set but I saw him do ‘God Only Knows’. I remember that one specifically because that was really, really something. 

GW: Have you got any weird stories from any of your gigs? Or fans? No one’s got a tattoo of you have they?

CB: I think somebody has lyrics tattooed but that’s not weird.

GW: No, that’s nice!

CB: That’s nice, that’s a good thing! I think one time when we were really young and in a different band we had a poem written about us during a set. We were playing ambient music back then, it was all very pretty. And it was a terrible gig. It was like a charity festival thing, it’s a smaller charity festival deal, bit of a hippy vibe. It was just deserted; the whole festival was deserted, post-apocalyptic style. It was really weird. Apparently it was a local thing and what had happened was that people had got really fucked up on the first night, just generally, and had then left and gone home so there was nobody there. We played in this little tent to lots of bands who were friends of ours and then one other guy. And that guy wrote a whole poem about the performance and sent it to us.

GW: Romantic.

CB: It was romantic! It had lots of religious themes. I don’t know. So that was weird, I suppose. But nice of him so I’m not gonna put him down.

GW: What do you guys listen to on tour?

CB: The last outing we went on, we listened to a lot of Richard Dawson’s new album, 2020. That’s a brilliant album and we can’t recommend him enough. And we sort of try to experiment with it. If you end up driving a while, music can turn you kind of crazy so we try podcasts too. We might try audiobooks. I know that’s not very rock ‘n’ roll or whatever but it’s usually easier to fall asleep to sometimes if you need to and it’s a long drive. We listen to this podcast called Heavy Weight. It’s this dude who finds people who have unresolved trauma or things in their life and he helps them go back and fix it. It sounds very heavy, and some of it is, but a lot of it is just very joyous.

GW: How are you all dealing with the current crisis? It’s obviously hit the industry really hard. How are you trying to adapt to this new way of making music?

CB: Well, we have an EP coming out on the 10 April and that hasn’t been moved at all, we didn’t move it back really. I guess the next thing to happen is that, and we’ll have records to sell and t-shirts and all that stuff. So all of that still comes out which is nice because we’re not pushing everything back. I don’t wanna let everything grind to a halt because that will just be depressing. In my house we have a little home studio thing in the basement so that means I can just be getting on with writing. It makes the whole quarantine thing way less horrible and it means I can just get on with things so, you know, every cloud. Because, hopefully, this will mean we’ll have a load of nice new material and this gives people time to regroup and think about what we’re doing. I thought that, come the end of this whole period, so many good bands are going to come out with some really great stuff. If you’re constantly gigging, it’s easy to sort of just see that as what you do. If you’re busy gigging all the time, and the gigs are good, then you’re happy to focus on that and play good shows but when that’s not an option, some people are going to react to it really well. The kind of artists that are more on record, who have good live shows but are more of a recording band, they’re going to flourish I think. Which will be really nice because then we’ll have stuff to listen to.

GW: The new EP is brilliant and  the song names are great too. What more can we expect? Do you have plans to release an album or further EPs?

CB: We’re still thinking about what to do next. I think another EP could be nice. With all of this stuff going on it might not be the best time to start thinking about an album because it would be hard to do the lead-up to an album at the moment. Everything’s very up in the air because of this pandemic situation. But it also means I have the time to write. The plan would be to come back, start playing some shows around this EP. The thing I’m looking forward to the most is doing some shows again once this is all over. I feel like the shows once this is over, for all bands, there’ll be a lot of energy there that’s been pent up by everybody. Those shows are gonna be great. Then I guess we’ll move onto another release, which I imagine will be another EP again. I don’t know, depends how much I write! It would be nice to take it in a different direction maybe, just whilst we’ve got all this time to experiment.

GW: Thanks Chris!

Zero Dollar Bill is out now. 

More about: Do Nothing