Kate Nash
Made of Bricks
Fiction / Interscope
By Dany Sloan
Music criticism is an avocation riddled with lazy comparisons, and one can get no lazier by saying that Kate Nash is a carbon copy of Lily Allen. Are you kidding me? If you really need someone to compare her to, Regina Spektor makes a lot more sense.
The story of Kate Nash is one that we have heard before; bored suburban teenager in the UK stumbles into music, a single is released and then a few short months later she is a star in her home country. Not to belittle her, but that's the easy part. The next step is not just going to take talent, but pure, classic luck -- breaking the States. To those that don't have their head buried in the NME, Nash is just another artist with a ton of hype.
Made of Bricks was produced by Paul Epworth (AKA Phones; Bloc Party producer) and while some of the production effects he adds weighs the recording down, it's the talent of Nash that shines through. The album's first US single, "Foundations," veers dangerously close to jilted-lover bullshit, but is saved by expert wordplay and mesmerizing instrumentation.
From the cheekiness and grooviness of "Mouthwash" to the smartassed diss of
"Dickhead," Nash shows that she is not a one trick pony, nor is she unaware of the concept of theme. Too many young artists have a million good ideas rolling around in their heads, but translating them into song is the difficult part. Nash succeeds because she knows that sadness, snarkiness and humor are all viable human emotions that can coexist within the context of an album.
By no means a brilliant debut, Made of Bricks has its highs and lows, showing someone that has a million ideas who is adroit enough to know how to utilize her talents at such a young age. While strains of Lily Allen and Regina Spektor do pop up here and there, Nash is definitely her own artist.
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