Bored Nothing‘s self-titled 2012 debut somehow feels like a hidden and almost forgotten indie music treasure of this decade, despite the gentle buzz it created in the blogosphere back then. Australian songwriter Fergus David Edward Miller and his alter ego created a must-listening experience for all dreampop and shoegaze lovers that clearly had an effect on Lukas Thomasson, drummer of Swedish indie-pop darlings Hater. Despite coming from different parts of the world, both projects share a certain love for youthful melancholia and if you didn’t have Bored Nothing and its bittersweet background story on your radar yet it’s about time.
I got this album as a birthday present from my girlfriend at the time. I guess I was listening to it really a lot and talking about it. It had something about it that really spoke to me at the time. I showed it to friends who didn’t like it that much, I remember one friend laughing at one song from it while I played it in my car since Fergus sang the word ‘fucks’ – which hurt me a bit, I didn’t find it cheesy at all. I skateboard since many years and when I was younger I watched a lot of skateboard video edits. One had the song Let Down (which is a great song) in it. I gloomed at the clip several times and then looked up the album on Spotify and started listening to it on repeat – which in turn did that I got the cd as a gift later on at my sweet birthday.
The Bored Nothing record is quite a sensitive depressing record; that’s my taste in music really. Just nostalgia and sadness kind of. Fergus played all the instruments by himself and I’ve made some records like that too, also with weary singing. So it just fitted me like hand in glove. Strolling around in my early twenties glooming with this record playing on and on. I contacted Fergus on Facebook and he was kind and wrote me back, I thought that was so nice. He was the same age as me and I looked up to him. He later took his own life, it was around two years ago after battling depression, and I was really in pain from hearing that.
Us being the same age, him looking like a young version of my dad, and the fact that I’ve also had several depressions really made it feel close to heart.
My favourite song on it might be Dragville, TN, the last song of the record. It’s a short, shake-your-hips kind of song which means it’s a bit happier compared to the other songs on the record. It’s straight forward and it feels like a version of Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus but made for us sadder people. All in all, this album is forever! I mean people will always have sad periods in their life from time to time, or maybe some are more like happy or whatever all the time I don’t know – it’s still nice to listen to sad great personal pop-songs for sure. The album has something ‘high-school’ about it, that’s nice to listen to! Right? High-school!
Hater will release their second studio album Siesta on September 28 via Fire Records, followed by several live dates later this year.
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