| Product: |
Made Of Bricks - Kate Nash |
| Date: |
29/02/08 (29 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Great bursts of creativity and fun; entertaining overall
Disadvantages: Underproduced, rushed through by the record company, seriously patchy
If you ever find yourself wanting to read a review about Kate Nash and find that within the first paragraph she gets compared to Lily Allen; do yourself a favour and throw away the review, burn it, and then stamp on any little fluttery charred bits that remain. Whilst Lily Allen may have been a little responsible for helping to properly kick off Kate's career, there is barely any connection to be made apart from the fact that both of them are from London.
Nash was working at River Island when she fell down some stairs and broke her foot. In the three weeks she had to spend recovering, she picked up a bass guitar and started playing. By the time she had recovered enough to start working again, she had a few songs written and ready for performance, and she... didn't need to start working again. She quit her job, released her first single "Caroline's A Victim" and started her new career as a musician. Allen, hearing the single, put Nash in her Myspace friends list and from there; she went stellar. After the success of second single Foundations, she got picked up by a record company and an album followed very quickly afterwards. This one, Made Of Bricks -- And it's NOT like Lily Allen.
It's a rush-job, sadly, so for now we don't truly know how Kate Nash is going to sound as she progresses as an artist. However, based on the better songs here, she could very well become the English Regina Spektor. Made Of Bricks is a scrappy, messy affair; a series of art-school doodlings backed up with cool sounding music and some clever lyrics, all held together by Nash's distinctive voice. She's got the same kind of strong, powerful intonation that Spektor has, as well as a passion for singing songs with weird pronunciations, dotty vocal tics and unexpected shrieks and yells. What's not to love?
The album starts off with a brief moment of strangeness. "Play". A buffed up drumkit starts slamming on a basic drumbeat, whilst Kate sings variations of the phrase "I like to play" in a deep, slightly creepy voice. It's not creepy in a scary sort of way, mind, but when she finishes by saying "I play all day in my room", you start to wonder how innocent the song is meant to be. Then again, that may just be me. There's a little riff on a guitar and some old-style music hall keyboards, but it's just an into for "Foundations", by far her most well known song. Foundations is all about the feeling of entrapment felt when you release a relationship is on the rocks. Even though you don't love each other anymore, it's hard to give up on what was once a relationship, and you can't bring yourself to break up. Nash's songwriting on the album flits around, but on occasion she can nail a feeling perfectly, and during the chorus when she says "my fingertips are holding on to the cracks in our foundations" she's onto a winner. The song itself seems bright and breezy, with a chipper piano and handclaps lighting the song forward, but the downbeat tone of the lyrics make the song something to work on several different levels. During the song she does drift into cockney vocal mannerisms, but it's generally for effect - Nash doesn't live through her songs, she instead creates stories (like Spektor - see, they really are similar! I don't make these comparisons up at random!) and her characters "act" them. Seeing as she's from London, it's no great leap for her characters to also be from the capital either, okay? I'm glad that's cleared up.
At several points the stories are what distinguish the songs. "Birds", for example, features some staggeringly poor lyrical bits, but the overall story the song tells means that it works overall. It's a simple lament where a boyfriend tries to tell his girl how much he fancies her, and goes into some torturous poetry which she can't understand. The music could do with a little more polish and build-up, although the low-key nature makes it a song I can go back to and enjoy without getting too tired of it. However, some of the trackss don't' last beyond the first few listens. "The Shit Song" is designed to be a kiss-off to a cheating lover, but instead seems pretty bitter and nasty, which doesn't do Nash any favours. It's still quirky and a little fun, but there's a lack of inspiration at work here, and it's obviously a piece of (possibly improvised) filler. I also think that "Little Red" the bonus track, is pretty boring. It's just Nash and a piano, going nowhere in particular, and it isn't the best ending for the album by any means due to it's chronic dullness.
There are two songs which are singled out as ballads on the main part of the album, being "We Get On" and "The Nicest Thing". You can tell they're the ballads because they only have piano and no bouncy drumbeats or flouncy weird bits. Of the two, We Get On easily stands up as the best, because it doesn't take itself seriously. Musically there's little to put between them, being two piano ballads, but The Nicest Thing has a forced vocal that highlights too much yelping for my taste. Again, this may just be my opinion, but there's a time and a place for yelping, as Regina has previously taught us (seriously guys - it's an amazing comparison I've made here, you should give me an award for it or something). Both songs have the same message, that of a girl trying to get noticed by her crush, and it's strange that both made the cut here. If Nash had been given more time to make her album, perhaps she could've written something different, but as it is... we'll have to wait for album 2.
But hey, there are a lot of positives to draw from the album. "Mouthwash" happens to be one of the better pop singles to get commercial airplay this year, being a jumpy piano song which unexpectedly leaps up just before the chorus to elevate everything into a sense of otherworldly...ness. People complain the lyrics are a little simplistic, but seeing as the song is about Nash trying to downplay herself to the general public, that would kinda be the point, really. (Look at me, all judgy and stuff. I've become my mother - more on that another time, though) It's tremendous good fun, and is a little like Nash's version of Spektor's 'Poor Little Rich Boy'. She verses are a little annoying, but the chorus is as good as any, with a sense of urgency strolling across Nash's piano and some cool trumpets (if that's what they are) blaring out. "Dickhead" is actually quite a cool mock-blues session. It's really, really sweary though, so be careful with it. If you can get past that though, it actually makes me laugh whenever I hear it. Whether that's deliberate on Nash's part or because the song is so out of place is something I'll never know, unless Channel 4 finally give me a TV show and I can interview her - you know you wanna see that happen. Another fantastic pop tune is "Pumpkin Soup", where Nash shamelessly declares "I just want your kiss, boy" over some outrageously OTT drums and brass. It's an in-your-face tune that you'll probably turn to more than any other here.
Unless you're me, in which case "Merry Happy" will be your most frequent point of call. It's a song that I very much like because it's dippy and upbeat and has a lot of creativity. The opening lyrics "watching me like you never watched no-one/don't tell me you didn't try and check out my bum" don't give much hope at the start, but the persistent piano roll and the slow drum beat give the song a strength that means it gets over this initial struggle. The song actually gets more rewarding with each new listen to it, with the repetitive mantra of the chorus becoming more and more memorable and enjoyable. She even manages to get the great line "Chatting on the phone/You can't take back those hours/But I won't regret 'cos you can grow flowers/from where dirt used to be" which is pretty wonderful, really. The optimism that shines out from this actually quite sombre-sounding number is also present in "Mariella" and "Skeleton Song", both of which share the trait of being as mad as a hatter. In the latter, Nash talks to an imaginary childhood friend - the skeleton - against a backdrop of some schizophrenic piano (can I describe it like that?) It's loopy, but has a surprisingly heartfelt chorus which even has some violins in it and stuff. It's a pretty epic song too, lasting a long while and running the length of different feelings. Like Mariella, it's about being a child at heart. Both songs are upbeat but mental, and Mariella in particular features some great vocal ticks and oddball phrases and is highly enjoyable.
There's a few people who have gained a lot of buzz this year, and of them Kate Nash seems to be one of the people with the most potential. Whilst she's let down here by her record company pushing the album forward before it was properly ready, and the poor off-kilter production that plagues some of the songs such as The Nicest Thing, there is a lot here that suggests in the future Kate Nash could very well become an important figure in modern British music. This album is, generally, worth it, I'd say, although just be wary that it is a collection of songs rather than a record. Some are better than others, but most of the songs are decent fun. This album sets up Kate Nash to be someone to watch in the future, a good-but-not great collection that shows enough creative spark to show a real talent in the making.
Yes, just like Regina Spektor.
Summary: Like Regina Spektor if she were Cockney
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