Do Nothing are doing the Jarred Up festival and a second album, actually.
In case you missed it, the second Jarred Up festival is taking place in Sheffield on the 25th October. As with all Jarred Up events, it is gonna be fucking class. Promoting the very best (as we see it) of the UK’s music scene currently, we are very excited to have Nottingham-based Do Nothing join us as our headliners.
In case you aren’t familiar with Do Nothing, they are a four-piece post-punk band hailing from Nottingham. Having released their debut album, Snake Sideways, in 2023, and their last single, ‘Summer of Hate’, in 2024, for the last year or so the band have been hitting the road again, playing a sell-out Independent Venue Week tour in January, and making appearances at various festivals across the country and elsewhere. We were delighted when Do Nothing agreed to sit down and chat with us ahead of the festival, to talk about their upcoming set, new music, and even LeBron James’ career post-2017.
Do Nothing are (left to right) drummer Andrew Harrison, guitarist Kasper Sandstrøm, bassist Charlie Howarth, and lead-singer Chris Bailey [Photo: Hollie Sheperd (@hollie_sheps)]
I think I would be remiss if I didn’t start this interview with what I think is the most important Do Nothing-related question I have. ‘LeBron James’ is a six years old this year, and the basketball star himself was 35 years old when the song was released. Are you as surprised as the rest of the sporting community that James is still playing basketball?
Fuck me is he still playing? Wow, yeah I am surprised by that. Is he still good? Let me look it up. Yeah, Google- well, the AI summary bit, says he is still very good. I am indeed surprised by that.
Do you think he’s ever listened to the song?
I highly doubt it, he must have a bunch of songs named after him. Well, at least loads of songs that mention him. I don’t think we’d be high on his list of likely songs to listen to.
How did that song actually come about? I am presuming you’re not a big NBA fan?
No, I’m not an NBA fan really; I’ve mentioned this in other interviews, but that song is actually about the guy behind Fyre Festival. I remember reading that he was selling fake opportunities for people to have dinner with LeBron James. I was surprised - not necessarily that he was successful doing that, but that people actually wanted to do that. I couldn’t think of anything worse than purchasing the opportunity to have dinner with a celebrity, cause surely there would just be this overriding sense of awkwardness, and you would be hyper-aware that the celebrity almost certainly wouldn’t want to be there. I don’t know, that may just be me.
Photo: Hollie Sheperd (@hollie_sheps)
Are you excited to be back coming back to Sheffield?
Yeah definitely! We haven’t played Sheffield much really; we played Cafe Totem back in the day, and in 2023 we played Sidney&Matilda, and then did that day-festival “Get Together”. But yeah, we’re looking forward to being back. We really enjoyed playing Sidney&Matilda. They have a new room, don’t they? It’ll be cool to see that and play there. I don’t really know why we haven’t played the city much, to be honest. I suppose Sheffield is a lot like Nottingham really, in that it often gets missed out on tours. We should definitely come and play there more.
You had a really successful Independent Venue Week tour at the start of the year, how was that?
Yeah we loved that IVW tour. It’s an easy win, really; small venues that will sell-out quickly, full of big fans with fast ticket-buying fingers. We played another small show in London recently that sold out before we got a chance to announce it (because of Dice notifications or something), which was great. We’re starting to see a set of familiar faces at a lot of our shows, which is lovely. They have a private discord, which I've looked at and is extremely heartwarming.
You clearly like playing these grassroots venues, and you’re very much associated with venues in Nottingham like The Bodega. Do you tend to prefer playing these sort of venues? Is it quite an important preference for you as a band?
I definitely would prefer to play small venues all the time if we could. Obviously this isn’t always logistically possible, both for us as a band and for the venues themselves, but I really love it. If we started playing bigger venues it would be out of necessity more than preference. That isn’t to say I hate big venues or anything, there are some really gorgeous ones, especially in America. But I think we just prefer the vibe of smaller venues. As you say, as a band we’re inextricably tied to these small venues through our links to places like The Bodega. Bodega has a strong sense of community, and it really influenced us as a band - partly because most of us worked behind the bar there at some point.
Photo: Hollie Sheperd (@hollie_sheps)
It’s been two years since your debut album Snake Sideways came out. Looking back at it, how do you feel about it?
It’s weird; we’ve recently finished writing and recording our second album, and during that process I made a conscious decision not to think about the last one. You need to do it in isolation, I think, and not be influenced by what you’ve done before. There are definitely peaks and troughs enjoyment-wise, which is only natural. You sort of have to learn to enjoy it, otherwise you may as well give up.
Well you’ve mentioned new music so you have to elaborate!
Yeah, album two is finished. We’re just waiting for some behind-the-scenes stuff to line-up. I think, sound-wise, it’s a natural evolution. Not a hard left-turn, by any means, but not identical to Snake Sideways either. Honestly, I’m trying to think how best to describe it, but it’s difficult.
Do you find it easy to write songs? Like, does it come to you quickly?
Not really; the beginning of the process is very much just bumbling around, until you stumble upon something. At least, that’s the case for me. That might be because I don’t really know what I’m doing, though, at least in terms of music theory.
Paul McCartney doesn’t know that stuff either though, and look what he’s done!
Yeah, but I guess you could argue that Paul McCartney actually does know that stuff, but just doesn’t necessarily know the terminology for it. He just knows it in his bones from having done it. I don’t know. For me, it’s very much a case of fiddling around until a workable idea just sort of appears.
What about the production side of things?
Yeah, that’s definitely as important as the writing. I’ve always wondered, if you were to give a producer a random collection of different songs from across an artists’ career, could they produce it in such a way so that it appeared (to someone who’d never heard the band) to be a cohesive album? How much of that process is down to the writing, and how much is down to the production/running order etc? So much of the idea of an ‘album’ is in the listener’s perception of it. It’s the same with album artwork; I struggle to enjoy an album if I think the artwork is shit. All the stuff surrounding the music itself makes a big difference to how people receive it.
Are there any album artworks you particularly enjoy?
There’s this David Byrne album, Uh-Oh, that has pretty great artwork. FKA Twigs’ debut album… also Madvillainy, particularly the orange box in the corner. Like, someone’s made a specific decision to put that on there. There’s also this album called Nixon by the band Lamb Chop; I haven’t ever really listened to the album, but I find the artwork funny and cute.
Final question: can we expect to hear some of the new music at your headline slot at the Jarred Up festival?
Definitely. In fact, most of our sets recently have been largely new material. There’ll still be some older tracks in there, but folks will definitely hear stuff from the new record.
Photo: Hollie Sheperd (@hollie_sheps)
To keep up-to-date with what Do Nothing have coming up next, you can follow them on Instagram or Bandcamp.
The Jarred Up festival is taking place at Sidney&Matilda in Sheffield, on the 25th October. Tickets are still available, so if you want to see Do Nothing’s headline set, as well as the rest of our fantastic line-up, be sure to grab a ticket whilst you still can.
Words: Charlie Sweeney
