Do Nothing – Act Natural

Do Nothing are back with “Act Natural”, the second single from their second album Friend World, out November 6 on Submarine Cat Records. The Nottingham four-piece (Chris Bailey, Kasper Sandstrøm, Charlie Howarth, Andrew Harrison) lean into their brashest instincts here: phaser-drenched guitars, a rubbery clavinet and a funk-leaning groove that swaggers from the first bar. There’s a big goofy drum fill in the middle that the band have said they had a good laugh about in the studio, and that sense of humour is baked right into the arrangement.

The joke is that all this energy sits on top of a lyric about the opposite of energy. Bailey describes the song as being about running on auto-pilot and not doing anything that makes you feel like a human, which, as he puts it, is a regrettably easy habit to slip into. Pairing that creeping numbness with one of their most outwardly blatant arrangements is the whole trick, and it works: the more danceable the track gets, the more the disconnection underneath it registers.

“Act Natural” follows lead single “Stars” as the second preview of Friend World, the band’s first album since their 2023 debut Snake Sideways. Louis Milburn of Folly Group produced, and the record broadens their sound toward synths and looser genre shifts. Bailey has called it their most uplifting work despite its darker themes, the idea being there are two sides to everything, no good without the bad.

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