It all started with a flight of stairs.
But tonight, British sensation Kate Nash is set to perform her biggest New York City show to date on the final leg of her first headlining tour of the States. Her debut album just hit U.S. record store shelves yesterday, but the show has been sold out for weeks. And her dedicated fans, along with a slew of industry reps, are here to see if the considerable hype is justified.
The crowd is brimming with anticipation as the lights go down, and the theme to “The Wizard of Oz” sounds through the loudspeakers. A roar sounds as a sprightly redhead in a vintage, faded blue granny dress saunters across the stage and parks herself behind a decorated electric piano. America, meet Kate Nash.
After being rejected at an audition for the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Ms. Nash took a nasty tumble down some stairs, shattering her foot. During her recovery - and contemplating a career-change - housebound in a cast, she took this time to focus on songwriting.
Through a series of serendipitous circumstances via MySpace, Nash was quickly signed and within months, her song “Foundations” reached #2 on the U.K. singles chart. This prompted her label Fiction to, like Arctic Monkeys before her, bring forward the release of her debut album Made of Bricks six weeks to August 6. The album reached #1 in the U.K.
Backed by a full band, Ms. Nash opens the proceedings with “Mariella” - a seemingly autobiographical ditty about a quirky little outsider lost in her own world - showcasing her proclivity towards tempo changes in piano, as well as an at times rapid-fire lyrical delivery. Hasty percussions signal “Shit Song,” a surprisingly pleasant tune which emphasizes one of Nash’s few shortcomings: silly wordplay. “You can come round mine / we can drink some wine / in the summertime” isn’t exactly Dylan, or even Lily Allen for that matter - a singer Nash often draws comparisons to.
The Lily Allen talk seems to be a product of Ms. Nash’s South London jargon, and occasional snarkiness directed at loser boyfriends (see: “Dickhead”). However, Nash’s sound is really posited somewhere between the radio-friendly piano rhythms of Vanessa Carlton, and the lyrical fusion of whimsy/melancholy reminiscent of Regina Spektor.
After “Dickhead,” the crowd showed signs of life, albeit in the form of a heckler yelling “You mad bitch!” at a visibly rattled Nash. The anonymous crowd member is lucky that Nash’s boyfriend, The Cribs singer Ryan Jarman, wasn’t in the building (months back, he broke a pint over a guy’s head for a similar offense).
Ms. Nash soon regained her composure for the catchy combo of “Mouthwash” and “Foundations,” her two most popular - and best - songs. It’s only a matter of time before these numbers pop up in the background of CW’s “Gossip Girl.”
The encore opened with the quaint “Little Red,” played solo by Nash, before she was rejoined by her band for the more upbeat “Pumpkin Soup.” It was a strange way for the U.K. chanteuse to end the evening, but the occasional Regina Spektor-esque pantomiming aside, it was for the most part a lovely one.
--Marlow Stern
SET LIST:
Mariella
Shit Song
Stitching Leggings
Skeleton Song
Birds
Nicest Thing
We Get On
Dickhead
Mouthwash
Foundations
Merry Happy
Encore: Little Red
Pumpkin Soup
