The Nottingham band have said they felt “freer” to follow “whatever ideas felt exciting” on their second LP
Do Nothing have announced their second album ‘Friend World’ and shared the melancholic single ‘Stars’ – listen below.
The Nottingham band released their debut record ‘Snake Sideways’ in 2023 and now they are back, with ‘Friend World’ to be released on November 6 via Submarine Cat Records. Pre-order/pre-save your copy here.
Built around drum machine patterns and squelchy synths, ‘Stars’ is quietly melancholic, with frontman Chris Bailey singing: “We’re stars, the world is a worm on a strong / Hanging around, let’s not amount to anything”.
Bailey has said about the song: “I guess the simplest interpretation of this one would be that it’s about ambition, and people who are famous, and all the ways in which it doesn’t make them happy people. More than that though, I’d say it’s about finding someone you connect with enough that you quit caring about the other things that used to drive you.”
“Getting away from the guitar was useful,” Bailey added. “We didn’t want it to sound particularly rocky or aggressive. We’re always interested in finding energy and momentum without relying on the obvious ways of creating them.”
‘Friend World’ has been produced and mixed by Louis Milburn of Folly Group and was recorded in Nottingham’s JT Soar.
Explaining how the new album deviates from ‘Snake Sideways’, Bailey has said: “With the first record there was a feeling of trying to move away from what people expected of us. This time we felt much freer. We didn’t feel any pressure to make a departure. We could follow whatever ideas felt exciting and not worry about what it meant.”
The album was inspired by novelist Elizabeth Smart and the leftfield comedian Andy Kaufman, who used to end shows by singing the song ‘This Friendly World’. “It’s this big, face-value expression of positivity that rang so weirdly to me,” Bailey has said. “I found it difficult to interpret the lyrics as anything other than sarcasm.”
“For me it’s an album about a lot of bleak things, but it doesn’t feel bleak,” he added. “I enjoyed making it more than anything we’ve ever done, and I’m more proud of it than anything we’ve ever made. That’s the whole point of the title really. There’s two sides to everything. Without the bad, there isn’t the good.”
NME awarded ‘Snake Sideways’ three stars in 2023, noting: “The freshness that electrified ‘LeBron James’, though, is no longer so obvious, with its striding conviction now somewhat smoothed over. It remains to be seen whether Do Nothing can use the solid foundations of ‘Snake Sideways’ as a launching pad to ascend to the giddy heights of their initial promise.”
