ARTiST: Kate Nash
TiTLE: Made Of Bricks
LABEL: Fiction
GENRE: Pop
TiME: 55:46 min
SiZE: 73,2 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Aug-02-2007
RELEASE DATE: Aug-06-2007
WEBSiTE: n/a
Track List:
01. Play 01:12
02. Foundations 04:05
03. Mouthwash 05:02
04. Dickhead 03:43
05. Birds 04:25
06. We Get On 04:34
07. Mariella 04:16
08. Shit Song 03:05
09. Pumpkin Soup 03:00
10. Skeleton Song 05:08
11. Nicest Thing 04:06
12. Merry Happy 13:10
Release Notes:
Every cloud, so they say, has a silver lining. About
18 months ago, Kate Nash was a teenager from Harrow,
moping round her house after being rejected by
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She fell down a
flight of stairs, broke her foot and was confined to
bed for a number of weeks.
To cheer herself up, she started to write some songs
while bedridden. Fast forward to summer 2007, and
Nash has had a number 2 hit with her first
'official' single and her album has been brought
forward by five weeks due to overwhelming public
demand. Now that's serendipity.
So why has Kate Nash struck such a chord with the
record-buying public? The more lazy journalists have
compared her to Lily Allen - presumably on the basis
that she's young, female, sings in a London accent
and gained a lot of fans on MySpace - but there's a
hell of a lot more to her sound than that.
Yes, she writes clever little pop songs about crap
boyfriends now and again, but names such as Regina
Spektor and even poets such as John Cooper Clarke
are as likely to crop up when listening to Made Of
Bricks. There may be subjects on the album ranging
from crumbling relationships to unrequited love, but
you'll also find songs about a child genius who sews
her own mouth shut and a girl with a skeleton for a
best friend.
It's all shot through with such warmth, wit and
vulnerability that you can't help but be charmed on
the very first listen. Forthcoming single Mouthwash
documents the minutae of everyday life ("I use
mouthwash, sometimes I floss") before a lovely
catchy chorus of "I'm singing uh-oh on a Friday
night, and I hope everything's going to be alright"
kicks in. And once it kicks in, you'll have trouble
removing it from your brain for a number of weeks.
If there's one thing that Made Of Bricks proves,
it's that the advance word about Nash's songwriting
talents was right on the money. Birds perfectly
describes a conversation between two inarticulate
young lovers, while the beautifully yearning The
Nicest Thing will strike a chord with everyone who's
ever been in love with someone unobtainable. Merry
Happy is the other side of the coin, a bouncy,
joyous number celebrating the end of a relationship
while extolling the joys of "dancing in discos,
eating cheese on toast".
The lovely tale of 'girl meets boy, boy ignores
girl' of We Get On is also a wonderful highlight, if
only for Nash's hilarious delivery of the line "so
my friends said what-ever, you'll find someone
better", while also reprising Franz Ferdinand's
notorious 'party/arty' couplet, and managing to make
the line "Saturday night, I watch Channel 5, I
particularly like CSI" sound heartbreakingly
poignant.
Yet it's the more seemingly obscure songs on here
that bear up best to repeated listening. Skeleton
Song is just incredible, with clattering percussion
and Nash's trademark piano skating all over the
place, while Nash sings about a beloved friend who
just happens to be a skeleton. It really shouldn't
work, but you'll find yourself combing the lyrics
over and over again. It's also probably Nash's most
musically ambitious number here.
Those long-term fans who downloaded demo versions
will find plenty to debate on here too - Dickhead
has changed from a stark piano tune to a smokey jazz
ballad with Bj÷rk-style sonic oddities scattered all
around, while the show-stopping Mariella benefits
from a beefed-up sound and some gorgeous harmonised
backing vocals. The cryptic lyrics ("sometimes, I
wish I was like Mariella, she got some pritt stick
and glued her lips together.So she never had to
speak") just add to the genius of it all.
Only Pumpkin Soup will possibly give some ammunition
to the 'poor man's Lily' brigade, but it's fresh,
funky and danceable and gives a great deal of
variety to the album.
Some fans may raise a quizzical eyebrow over some of
Nash's finest songs that are missing, such as
Stitching Leggings, but that's all the more reason
to keep an eye out for B-side releases over the next
few months - there are at least four or five songs
here on here that could easily be Top 5 hits between
now and Christmas.
So, from bed-bound broken foot casualty to creator
of the finest debut album of the year in just over a
year. That's one pretty huge silver lining.