Kate Nash – Made of Bricks
Kate Nash is a young English singer. She’s often compared to Lilly Allen. A lot of it is they are both English white girls with London accents. But where Allen’s “Smile” didn’t encourage me to give her a second glance when i heard “Foundations” by Nash I sought out more. I wasn’t the only one. Her album release date was actually pushed up more then a month in the UK due to the popularity of “Foundations”. Her first full length Made of Bricks reached number 1 on the UK charts, but hasn’t made it to the US yet. It’s coming out January 8th on Geffen Records. You can buy it here if you wanna do that sort of thing and I would recommend doing just that.
if you wanna do that sort of thing and I would recommend doing just that.
Made of Bricks is a dozen songs deep and only one, “We Get On”, I have to skip. “We Get On” is too sweet and poppy for me and I hate what the piano is doing in the song, but the rest of the album is nice. Kate’s delivery is unusual at times. It’s her phrasing, where she places her words, is different then most but it works. The production is nice thanks to Paul Epworth. He also produced Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm, Maximo Park’s A Certain Trigger and The Raptures Pieces of the People We Love among others. A good example of what Paul Epworth is bringing to the table is “Mariella”. It starts with a slow piano and Kate is kinda waking up to the song meandering about singing about how she is too loud and has a big mouth. Then roughly around 1:15 into the song a new piano loop is in place of the lazy Sunday morning one. The new piano loop gradually gets faster and faster. After a minute or so of building and building here come the hand claps and a few seconds later here comes the drums followed by tambourine and your are jamming out to Nash singing about a little girl who glued her lips together. What can I say… it works. Listen for yourself
Although I tend to gravitate to the faster songs her slower stripped down songs work well like “Birds” or “Nicest Thing”. “Nicest Thing” is heavy on the guitar and violin sounds as Kate sings honestly about wishing a certain person loved her. As a quickish side note “Nicest Thing” reminded me of a song and I couldn’t place which song it was. Turns out it was “Breathe Me” by Sia. But back to the subject at hand, Made of Bricks is a well crafted pop album. It’s nice musically and Kate brings her own style, check it out.
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Merchandise
Kate Nash Made of Bricks CD / MP3
Kate Nash My Best Friend Is You CD / MP3
Tags: album review, female vocalists, Kate Nash, Made of Bricks, Mariella, Paul Epworth, streaming music, UK
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Music
kat
the vocal echo (or whatever that effect is), at least at the end, is like bloc party, too. what bothers me about her (and same with lily allen) is she gives up on creating flawlessly clever lyrics and just goes for being cute to coast through weak lyrical phrasing. i can’t forgive that, personally. i immediately write the person off as stupid and it’s over. i feel like the message i get from her (at least in this one song), lady sovereign and lily allen is the same and it’s not an empowering (or even an interesting) message about female british talent — capable of briefly interesting lyrics and on-pitch vocals and that’s about it. kate bush must roll her eyes and sigh.
charlie bucket
interesting. although who really does create flawlessly clever lyrics though? i never paid much attention to lilly allen and although i like sov’s song “random” i dont check for her either because she is basically doing a missy elliot impression. i don’t really listen to much pop music but i like made of bricks. she isnt doing anything revolutionary. made of bricks is about the good and bad parts of love/relationships (just like about every other pop album) with a few other topics thrown in for good measure, but its a nice album.
Master Torrance
Kate Nash os one of those ‘grunty’ artists that come up from time to time. She eats her lyrics then ‘grunts’ them right out. This is accused of being art, but I think (and I am not alone in this) that her work would fare better if it were pinned sensitively to the Gay Hip Hop movement and sold in outlets such as Milletts.