Coming-of-age albums are typically the province of shiny, sparkling, squeaky-clean teeny-bop child stars who are hoping to do some growing up musically when faced with the soon-coming end to their adolescence. These are the girls who forsook their childhoods in order to star in programs on the Disney Channel, release albums to that key 8-to-12-year-old pre-teen demographic, star in straight-to-video movies that are “safe for the whole family,” and generally make a mint of their innocence and naïveté. And in an effort to display to the world that they’re not safe, cutesy, 16-year-old virgins, they release over-the-top albums filled with pseudo-sexualized lyrics, while touring relentlessly in scanty outfits. These ladies’ attitude, apparel, and actions all scream, “Look at me! I’m grown up now!” while still being controlled by handlers and PR people, as everyone operates under the delusion that these ladies can simply shed their youthful image with some songs expressing shallow notions on their physical maturation.
And it’s that overplayed, horrid cliché that makes albums like Made Of Bricks from British songstress Kate Nash such a rich, deep, artful breath of fresh air. The album overflows with Nash’s ruminations on the traditional components of a coming-of-age album - breaking up, jealously, spurned love, falling in love, finding an identity apart from one’s parents - but she does so with cheeky, clever aplomb. With a lyrical style that’s easily comparable to fellow British lass Lily Allen, the fashions of music on Ms. Nash’s album are cut from the same cloth as Regina Spektor’s: quirky, bouncy, piano-led pop. Whether it’s on “Foundations,” where Kate sings of clinging to the crumbling cracks of her debilitated relationship, “Dickhead,” an ode to an idiot boy in her life, “Birds,” a blissful, whimsical track swimming with exchanged metaphors between two young lovers, or “Merry Happy,” a conflicted song of thanks to an ex-lover for how he made her feel and how he helped her grow up, Ms. Nash destroys the myth of the tawdry young socialite singer with a one-track mind. Made Of Bricks is an album that is both bouncy and fun as well as emotionally raw and honest.
-- Adam P. Newton
