Nothing's Domenic Palermo talks Slide Away, Whirr, new music, more
A candid convo about pissing off the industry, rehabilitation, and the future of shoegaze's best modern band.
It feels good to finally have a conversation with Nothing frontman and Slide Away shoegaze festival creator Domenic "Nicky" Palermo on Chasing Sundays. This blog is named after a Nothing lyric, after all, and Palermo has long been one of my favorite musicians and interview subjects. He was instrumental in facilitating my 2024 interview with Whirr guitarist Nick Bassett, which was published long before the quasi-canceled shoegaze mavericks decided to write a new record, let alone agree to play their first shows in 10 years, which I witnessed and wrote about last week.
In a way, this Q&A is a follow-up to that heavy conversation I had with Bassett exactly one year ago this week. I called Palermo up a few days after Slide Away's Brooklyn and Philly dates conclude (April 26th and 27th, respectively) and asked him to reflect on his shoegaze festival selling out two 3,000-capacity theaters on back-to-back nights – with a 4,000-capacity sellout slotted to go down in L.A. later this month (May 24th). Since the fest this year is centered around Whirr's long-awaited yet still unexpected comeback, the conversation naturally veered into how Whirr's return came to be, and what it meant for Palermo – a longtime friend and liaison of the band – to watch them take the stage again.
Palermo spoke candidly about the years-long process he embarked on to make sure Whirr's return was done for the right reasons, and emphasized how he, Slide Away, and Whirr have been prioritizing the safety and dignity of the LGBTQ+ communities who were harmed by Whirr's past transgressions. I found Palermo's words about rehabilitation within this context very moving, and I think any Whirr and/or Nothing fan with a conscience will, too. After the heavy stuff, I asked Palermo about the new Nothing music he has in the works, the band's revamped five-piece lineup, his personal favorite Whirr music, and his "bigger and better" plans for Slide Away 2026.
Like all interviews on Chasing Sundays, the first two thirds of this conversation are free for anyone to read, but the final portion that includes the juicy teasers Nothing and Whirr diehards will want to know is for paying subscribers only. Sign up for Chasing Fridays for just $5/month to read this entire interview, as well as all of the other weekly paywalled content that I publish on this site. My paying supporters allow me to put as much time and care into Chasing Sundays as I do, so if you appreciate what I publish here and have the means to support me monetarily, I'd be immensely grateful.
It’s been about a week since the Brooklyn and Philly editions of Slide Away. How are you feeling right now about how those went?
It feels good. I could have never expected this actually working out as well as it did. It was a lot of work and I didn't even have a lot of time to put my head up and be like, “Holy fuck, there's a lot of people in this building,” especially at [Brooklyn] Paramount. It wasn't until like this week where I sat back and was able to settle my mind a bit. I'm pretty happy. There was a lot of things against this happening from top to bottom, from billing to just being in a venue that size, and just exceeding everyone's expectations. Managing those expectations but also exceeding them. Trying to keep the values of what we did while we moved into a bigger room with a more corporate sponsor.
It’s still confusing as fuck to me, man. I keep looking at photos because I keep getting tagged in stuff and I'm just like, shit man, this is a big event. That's the biggest Philly show we ever did. It’s wild playing that venue essentially as like a headliner and thinking back to being a kid and going to that venue and seeing the bands I seen there. I seen MBV in that room and countless other things. That felt like an important piece of this whole thing, whatever it ends up being. And Brooklyn, just seeing that shit I'm just like, “What the fuck, what did we do?” It's like, we did it. We did it. That's cool. I have a hard time digesting any kind of success sometimes, and I'm usually moving so fast onto the next thing that I don't get a chance to pat myself on the back or anything like that. It’s always like, “OK, what’s next?” We got LA in three weeks and I'm sure that's going to be a trip too. I’m more or less ready to get my ducks in a row and just make sure we're prepared.
Eli Enis
Monday morning [after the Philly show] I woke up at eight. It’s like family at Franklin [Music Hall]. Like, all the management and all the bartenders are all people I worked with and stuff. So after we got everybody out there, I sat and drank with them at the venue until six in the morning – like a dickhead. It was kind of like a celebration, you know, everybody's happy to see me there. But I had to be up at nine in the morning to fucking load all the gear, the backline and all the Whirr merch, into my house in Philly. I couldn't get into the place I was staying, so I just slept in my car for like two hours. Got cooked by the sun, literally just window open. I was just head out the window in the middle of fucking Kensington. People probably thought like I just OD’d or something. I'm surprised no one called the fucking cops or ambulance on me, because I just looked like I was fentanyl’d out. So I just woke up at like 8:45 without an alarm, because I forgot to set an alarm, I don't know how that happened. The whole gang was at the house, 12 people ready to load in. So I loaded a fuck ton of gear and merch into my house, and then I had to drive everyone to the airport, because we booked everyone to be out at the same time so we can just get everybody out.
And you’re running on like an hour of sleep at this point.
Well, it's worse than that. Friday was the last night I got a decent amount of sleep, but that was still only like four hours, because we were up at like nine for rehearsals. So after Friday night, I went to bed at like four by the time I got home after the Friday show. Load out at 7:30 a.m. that day to be a Paramount by fucking by 8 a.m., then I was at Paramount from 8 a.m. till we finished loading out at 4:30 in the morning, and we have to be in Philly by 10 a.m. the next day. So back up again at fucking 8 a.m. because there's a marathon here in Brooklyn, and I basically had to drive from here to Philly. So really, I probably slept maybe eight hours over five days or something.
You got Slide Away’s name on the big board of “sold out” shows in the Brooklyn Paramount green room. Thinking back to what you and Nothing were doing even five years ago, could you have ever imagined that happening?
Man, no, not at all. Like I said, it’s hard for me to digest this and make it feel like a successful ploy or anything. I do realize what I did, and my favorite part about it… I know this sounds crazy. I just feel a lot of energy from people who don't want to see me doing what I'm doing. It’s been that way since the beginning.
Who do you mean? Record industry people?
Yeah, like anybody in the industry. We’re very anti-industry anyway. Everything is kind of done at our own pace. We do align with some of these people and we're not out to be difficult by any means. I feel like people want to keep us at bay at all times. There’s the booking agent companies that make things difficult, there’s certain promoters, and just the general industry. We kind of do everything ourselves, everything we've done is really organic. I just remember having conversations with booking agents about trying to get bands on [Slide Away] and them trying to overprice me, asking for more money than they deserved. Because it’s a festival. Kind of try to bully you around.
They know what they can get, and they also put us into a corner with Whirr and everything. Just a lot of doubters of everything that I was doing. Also me not being a promoter and [them] not taking what I’m doing seriously. It just felt good to be like, “Oh, OK, we sold out in 24 hours. Fuck you.” I’ve done something once again that everybody didn’t think I was going to be able to do. But it’s not just me. I have a gang behind me of people that believe in me and we all work together and we get things done. We’re fucking good at what we do and we take care of everybody. And it’s different.
I’ve been through these fucking festivals that are soulless, like all that bullshit that happens in Vegas and shit. I’ve done all that, I’ve been to all these places and it fucking sucks. There’s no care…it’s just soulless. People feel that [difference at Slide Away] for sure, and just come away with more friends and close people, and to me that's so fucking cool. It just feels communal.
It’s crazy that a festival of this magnitude was headlined by a DIY shoegaze band who do all of their merch and vinyl either themselves or with a DIY label, The Funeral Party. Slide Away is so ground-level compared to any other band that would have their name on that “sell out” wall.
That's kind of exactly what I mean, too. The reason why there’s a weird, hidden wish to see me fail is because I’m not wettin’ the beaks of the people you’re supposed to take care of when you’re doing this. I’m cutting out a lot of middlemen by doing what I’m doing and that's the one thing you do in this industry where you can make enemies. There’s powers that be all over the fuckin' place, and they don’t like when you’re doin’ what we do. It’s rough. It’s really hard for people to do this kind of thing because of that. People shut doors in your face. There’s a lot of things that won’t approach us because of what I’m doing now, like moving forward.
It’s kind of scary in a sense. It kind of shadows how some of this country is built and capitalism in general. I’m going to feel the effects of this in other ways for sure. This is never going to be easy for me, I don’t think. But nothing really ever is for me anyway. I’m sure I’ll wear myself into the ground at some point and I’ll need to take a break or something, but right now I feel kind of invigorated by it. I do love to prove people wrong. So right now I should feel a lot better than I do about myself, but I do feel pretty good. So upward and onward.
Whirr’s return was obviously the highlight of the festival in a lot of ways. Just such a huge occasion that so many people thought they’d never see. At last year’s Slide Away, could you have imagined Whirr playing this year’s?
Absolutely not. The joke I had made for five years was, “when are we doing it?” But it was more like a joke because to me there was a lot of work that needed to be done for that to ever happen. And we were working on it. Me and you had our conversation. I told you some of the stuff we were doing behind the scenes with different non-profits and stuff like that. Just putting foundational work down to help these guys move on with selling their records and stuff. Even with the [Whirr/Nothing split reissue in 2024], we donated all those test presses to Trevor Project [a suicide prevention non-profit for LGBTQ+ young people]. I’ve been working with those guys forever anyway.
But I always just told Nick [Bassett, Whirr guitarist], “Yo, if you're doing something, fucking throw some money this way.” It just shows good faith to where your fucking head is. And that way, maybe at some point, people can’t look at back at your records and have that giant asterisk there, and at least you know that you were doing the right thing the whole time.
Eli Enis
And to be clear, because you're speaking between the lines here, you’re talking about Whirr donating a consistent amount of their profits to the Trevor Project, right?
Well, yeah, we did multiple things over the past five years. Whirr’s had their Spotify donation button going to some Oakland [non-profit] for a few years. It’s more along the lines of, "Hey [Bassett], just put some money in the right places. Don't worry about having this be front page news because it's only going to get thrown back in your face. Just do the things that make you feel good about yourself when you're doing this, and it'll wind up working itself out someday where people understand where your fucking head truly is."
It’s weird because when we were even getting ready to do [Slide Away], it’s such a touchy fucking thing because you want to let everybody know some of the steps and actions that have moved forward, and this isn’t just a “I don’t give a fuck” type thing. Like, “here’s Whirr,” and just feed right into that. But at the same time, when people are like, “You want to make a statement about this,” I’m like, I’m not gonna fucking make a statement about this. Anybody who knows me knows where my heart is and where my head is with this shit. I’m not gonna set myself up to get scrutinized by trolls on the internet that are never going to be happy about anything that happens. I still get called a transphobe because people don’t even know the difference between Whirr and Nothing half the time, that's how fucking delusional everything is. I don’t have time for that.
Plus, I constantly put in the work and I’m constantly looking out for people that are marginalized in any group. And I’ve been like that for the past 12 years, so I’m very comfortable with myself. I don’t care about how anybody feels. And the whole thing was obviously a dice roll. I didn’t know how it was going to turn out, and none of those [Whirr] guys did either, and it was scary. But the same thing with the shows…we did $2/ticket [going to] Trevor Project here and $2/ticket in L.A., we moved that [toward] the fires that happened. We were going to do Trevor Project across the board because those are my people and they fucking do good work over there.
Like, obviously I’ve dealt with suicide stuff through my life with family and friends, a little bit more than the average person may have. So it’s a little extra touchy for me. That org really does something special for me. Just taking care of kids that are struggling with their identity and they're not getting the right help from the right people. To me, that's one of the saddest things ever. Watching a young kid choose that way out because they don’t know what the fuck is going on yet and they're just getting tortured, basically.
But we did move off of them because of the fires [and to an organization] with a direct link to the incarcerated firefighters that were out there in LA. And I was like, “this is cool,” because I’ve been on that side of things to an extent. I’ve never fought fires but I’ve been incarcerated, so I like to reach into that area when I can. With Philly, we worked with that Philly org that is looking to loosen the ties on the probation and parole in Philly, which is a fucking nightmare. But again, this is fine print on the ticket sales because I don’t want to have shit thrown back in my fucking face, and I don’t want anything to look like a fucking press move. Because like I said, I don’t care about that. To me, I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do and anybody along the way that wanted to have a conversation with me, I did.
I answered fuckin DMs on the Slide Away page. There wasn’t that many, to be honest. But I planned on that. I was like, look, anybody who’s not just trolling and talking shit, if they want to have a conversation with me, I’m always down. I am. A couple people that rolled into the DMs, some trans folks, who were like, “I love Slide Away, it was beautiful last year, but I’m genuinely concerned about this. I feel like it just makes me feel unsafe at your thing.” And that's who I’ll speak to. I immediately answered and gave my phone number and was like, “Yo, if you feel like it, I’m down to talk and I can explain where my head is on this.” And that's kind of what the work involves for me. I don’t want anyone to ever feel unsafe with what I’m doing. It’s hard. What I’m doing is not easy work. But it has to be done a particular way. I told myself that if I was going to do this, then I was going to be available for whatever I needed to do. It’ll definitely be nice booking a festival again where I don’t have to be an HR.
As you were describing, there was so much work that went into doing it this year with Whirr, and there were all of these complicated feelings and emotions. I’d use the word “baggage,” even. With all of that in the backdrop, what did it feel like for you to be standing side-stage and watching Whirr play their first show in 10 years?
Man, I was really just happy to see them be able to smile a little bit and not be so anxiety-ridden. These are good boys. I know it’s hard to trust my opinion…they just did some stupid shit and paid for it pretty dearly. But in my opinion, no one should be subjected to that punishment for that long. And it was sad to watch them all have that stripped from them. While I do think that them going away benefited them in the sense that a lot more people cared because it became taboo. They still couldn’t do anything with it. And that's even worse. That's every person who plays music’s dream to have that [audience], and to not be able to act on it is some kind of weird torture.
One of the trans folks I was speaking to told me her story and it was like, “The reason why this was so hurtful to me is I was transitioning right at the the time that that happened, and I was a giant Whirr fan. And it broke my heart and I felt terrible. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing all of the sudden.” All of this really terrible stuff. And I was like, “I’m gonna tell [Bassett] this, I’m gonna tell these guys this,” because this is exactly where the problem lies. You don’t know what everyone’s story is. So it can’t just be written off as “these guys are just fucking being knuckleheads” – bad things can happen, especially with something as sensitive as this kind of stuff.
I showed that to [Whirr] and after I talked to her for a while I explained to her what had been going on behind the scenes for a while and I kind of vouched for myself for them. I was like, “I’d love to introduce you to them.” Now we talk all the time and she kind of ended this thing like, “I can finally listen to this band again. I appreciate you having this conversation.” Granted, I can’t say that that would happen with everybody. But I just try to shoot it as straight as possible. I’m not expecting everybody to believe what I’m saying, and I can only say what I can say, right? Like, these are the facts that I have, this is what they’ve been doing, and this is who these people are. And you can only take it for what you can take it.
But showing that kind of stuff to Nick and those guys along the way, that fucking kills them. That that could be a thing that happens. And they realized that a while ago, but it’s something they have to live with. Just like anybody that makes any kind of mistake. I’ve made plenty myself. My whole life is riddled with terrible decisions and mistakes, and all you can really do is try to make less of them and redeem yourself for the ones you made in the past. But there’s got to be a certain degree of empathy. This is what makes us humans, right? If someone can’t walk off their past mistakes, what the fuck are we doing?
I’m a firm believer in rehabilitation. I’ve done it myself and I’m doing it every day. And I stand behind that. I had to put my foot down and be like, I know these guys well enough and I know the work that they’ve done to make this situation better and try to help where they can, and I’m going to get behind them. I’m going to try to convince them to do this so they can get this out of their system and then be done with it. And hopefully be able to move on and know that this was always a thing that happened and turn it to something that was actually beneficial for the community.
The day before we had this conversation, Nothing and Whirr just announced a small summer tour. I did not expect that because based on what Bassett told me last year, he said he never wanted to tour again simply because he doesn’t like touring. So how did that come to be?
I definitely pushed this a little bit. These shows…this is the end of it. They want to all go back to their lives. This is something that I kind of was like, “let’s do a quick run, couple dates here and there, and then let’s wrap it up.” Because I got other shit I gotta do, too. I can’t be dragging Whirr around. It was kind of a [spontaneous] move, to be honest. And for me, it was a good way to put a couple more dollars down to [various nonprofits]. We’re working with some people for this tour and get to do some stuff that's a little bit more localized which is cool too.
Are you able to reveal the organizations?
We’re working with several different local things in pretty much every city, if we can. A couple cities we had a hard time finding stuff so we revamped back to Trevor Project again. But for the most part we were able to reach out to some mutual aid stuff that's localized. But also we email these people and make sure that they're cool with us doing this, too. We’d never want to piss anybody off by being like, “Oh, you’ve got the transphobic band?” I learned a long time ago that transparency’s key. I beat myself down having the same conversation about why [the Whirr reunion is] happening. But it’s nice to be continually doing some shit like that on the low, though. I’m not here to service anybody besides the people who we’re trying to help. Everybody else that has something to say can kiss my ass, pretty much.
Nick [Bassett]'s the one who said he didn’t want to do any of these shows, but I feel like he really did. I think he’s just been battered enough to where he was scared. He doesn’t want to have to deal with that again. It’s been a pretty traumatic 10 years for them guys. They didn’t want to stir it up again, but we got to sometimes. The rest of them guys, Loren [Rivera] and stuff, they fucking definitely wanted to do it. We’ll see. Tickets are selling good. I’d love to get this done with and then move on.
Speaking of moving on –
Real quick, I feel like I’m not jumping on this enough. This was not only hard for me to convince [the public] why this can be OK to do. My team, even, Marissa [D’Elia] and Mahmood [Shaikh], were very skeptical. Marissa herself was part of that whole thing. She was young at the time, but she was on some “fuck Whirr” shit when that was going on. And Mahmood is very, very sensitive to this kind of stuff. The odds against me were very stacked. When I first brought this up it was like, “yeah right.” And I was like, “hear me out for a second.” And I kind of just said the same shit I just said to you and the plan was, “Look, I’ll be at the helm anytime this needs to be talked about. And if you guys are cool with that, and you guys stand behind what I’m saying, it’s me that's on the front line.”
But obviously they're attached to me and I was super worried about that, too. What am I possibly doing to cause these guys harm by doing this? How does this turn out? So, I just wanted to mention that because it was a pretty stressful thing what I was putting these two people I care about so much possibly into.
But it seems like things worked out.
They did, thankfully. Because I was really worried. The whole thing was just a giant dice roll for everybody. But we believed in what we were saying. So at some point you just gotta jump in. I couldn’t have done this without [Marissa and Mahmood] and I don’t mention them enough. It’s impossible without them.
Subscribe to Chasing Sundays at the premium tier to read the rest of this conversation. Topics include: Nothing's new music, the band's fresh lineup, Palermo's favorite Whirr album, and his "bigger and better" plans for Slide Away 2026.