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Published on 7/25/08
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British songwriter Kate Nash was a veritable overnight sensation in the U.K., with MySpace postings and a few singles fostering interest in her debut Made of Bricks, which went to the top of the British charts last summer. But rather than strike while the iron was hot, Nash’s U.S. label didn’t drop the disc domestically until this past January; like pal Lily Allen before her, Nash did only a fraction of the business here that she did back home.
There’s no rhyme or reason to why one British hype act makes it and another doesn’t. The album is pleasant enough, and in another more forgiving era, songs like the playful “Pumpkin Soup,” profane “Dickhead” or plain-spoken and pretty “Birds” would connect in a snap. Certainly, the northern soul underpinnings of “We Get On” or the jaunty alt-pop of “Skeleton Song” and “Mouthwash” aren’t out of line with Allen’s casually swaggering output, and elsewhere Nash isn’t that different in disposition from Amy Winehouse.
But in the defense of record labels everywhere struggling to keep up with the rapid pop-culture turnover, Nash herself doesn’t seem quite ready for the spotlight. Sure, a confluence of cultural changes may have prematurely jump-started her career, but anyone sensitive to hype will detect more than a whiff of coffeehouse R&D in Made of Bricks. Indeed, at its heart the album is kid stuff, banality draped in borrowed attitude and disguised by secondhand quirks rather than boosted with craft. It’s a characterless placeholder in search of a prime-time medical drama where the idea of romance and heartbreak beats actually conveying it.
Nash plays Vic Theatre May 2, 2008.
