Kate Nash - My BestFriend Is You

Thu 3rd Jun, 2010 in Music Reviews

Somewhere in 2007, a girl called Kate Nash released an album on inoffensive pop called Made Of Bricks. Its Britpop demeanour and point-of-view lyrics created immediate comparison to Lily Allen and, well, Lily Allen.

Fast forward three years and now Lily Allen’s lyrics have gotten darker yet hardly any more adventurous, whilst a girl by the name of Florence Welch has proven that the opposite formula can still give you loads or critical and commercial success.

Kate Nash, seemingly unfazed by these developments, is now doing spoken word recordings, with an arty fringe and production standards that surround her with more cheese than the latest touring Broadway production. Surprisingly, I am neither kidding nor suggesting a bad thing.

Nash’s first few aural moments in My Beast Friend Is You appear more representative of producer and Suede alumni Bernard Butler than the singer. Handclaps, string arrangements and crisp basslines on opener Paris give the illusion that Nash is but another British popstar with manufactured class, such as previous project Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Duffy. Yet the voice hasn’t changed; she still squeals about past love in her conversational tone.

This creates a strange paradox, that both the instrumentation and vocalist in question try to overcome. Kiss The Grrrl features Kate Nash’s own attempt at soaring Motown vocals, for example, coming off second-rate. Likewise, I Just Love You More drones out Nash’s voice in reverb repeat of the title and fuzzy guitar, leading to a chorus of girlish wails akin to a tween perplexed in Beatlemania. You were so far away has a similar effect, despite meaning to be a sombre acoustic song. In short, they’re Butler’s songs, not hers.

Of course, songs like Early Christmas Present and single Doo Wah Doo keep the expensive instruments as twee as possible and leads to some of the brighter and better moments. Yet the most memorable cuts come not during moments of delight, yet those of vengeful retort.

The second half of Don’t Want To Share The Guilt? and Mansion Song features rant-style poetics, akin to if Belle and Sebastian covered Rage Against The Machine. The latter is particularly vicious; an attack on the modern expectations of women leading to a drum-lead refrain. In an album where focus is often pointed at softer subjects, it’s great to here such an outburst – especially when feels as direct, poignant and real as Kate Nash makes it.

That’s not to say that Nash should give up pop altogether. Through pit through many tired genre tests by Butler, she still sounds as happy as ever as Later On, a song so big on sound, synths and catchy refrains that you feel the joy in every note, proves. And you can’t say she hasn’t developed since Made of Bricks. She’s just developing in a different way and at a different rate than her counterparts. Will anyone outside of the Kate Nash mailing list care? Who knows. But it looks promising so far.