Pity me, oh TINTV folk, for I am reduced to an even more uninformed, opinionated reviewing fool. I know I have loadsa press release stuff somewhere, but can I remember where I put it? Thank goodness for myspace and Wikipedia: accessible, ubiquitous, inaccurate.
Kate Nash, you will be hearing with unfailing regularity, is the next big thing. Raised in Harrow, learning piano, attending some posh-sounding schools (though those are always the worst) and breaking her leg after failing to get into the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (blimey, she took that a bit hard, didn’t she?), she decided that music was the game for her. Earlier this year, she released ‘Caroline’s A Victim,’ an nu-electro-parody that gained Lily Allen’s respect and its own parody, ‘LDN Is A Victim,’ and now she prepares to release an as yet untitled album and a second single, ‘Foundations,’ produced by Maximo Park and Bloc Party technical overseer, Paul Epworth.
Three months is a long time in music (and on Pluto) and a lot has happened to Kate Nash’s sound in the ensuing. Gone are the nu-electro beeps and ‘killer beats’ of ‘Caroline…’ now replaced by piano and acoustic guitar of ‘Foundations,’ a wholly more mature offering, both lyrically and melodically. The rhythm has all the force of a runaway bullet train and Kate’s lyrical expertise is given free license to expostulate dryly, wittily and erratically. It is very, very easy to make comparisons to Lily Allen – she has the same ‘Sarf Lundun’ twang – but her delivery has more in common with Ani Di Franco or Regina Spektor. There’s less innocence and more despairing resignation to lines like “Yeah, intelligent input, darlin’, why don’t you just have another beer then?’ than you would get from Lily even in her most bittersweet moments. It’s more Jamie T or Matt Skinner, but from the other side. The song’s inexorable momentum towards a violent, off stage conclusion is tragic, but that same momentum is also voyeuristically compelling. You become an embarrassed observer to a very personal tragedy.
She may only be nineteen, she maybe of THAT set and she may be getting all the radio coverage in the world, but consider: Kate Bush wrote ‘Man With The Child In His Eyes’ when she was thirteen, and that to my mind is one of the most touching songs ever made; Emily Dickinson wrote so knowledgeably on the human condition without ever leaving the house. Kate Nash is wise beyond her years, and this is quite a tune. Definitely not a victim of its own potential success.
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