Release Date: Mar 5, 2013
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: INgrooves
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"I'm a feminist/And if that offends you, then fuck you!" barks Kate Nash over rackety garagerock guitars. Nash's 2007 debut topped the U.K. charts, but on her third LP she's moved a long way from her old twee piano-backed confessions. Or has she? The album is self-released (Nash raised money for the record on the website PledgeMusic); the sound is "indie" (she's been listening to Best Coast); the lyrics are pugnaciously "political" (lots of half-digested gender theory).
There’s girl bands, there’s Girl Bands and there’s Grrrl bands, there’s feminism, there’s Feminism and then there’s Girl Power, but there’s just the one Kate Nash and on Girl Talk she tries to cover it all. This isn’t quite the femmepunk Riot Grrrl reinvention you’ve heard about; the girl who wrote grown-up pop as perfectly observed as ‘Foundations’ and ‘Do-Wah-Doo’ hasn’t released a Bikini Kill record, nor is this a radically politicised feminist treatise, alas. It’s all a bit more soaked in than that.
With her 2010 sophomore album, My Best Friend Is You, British singer/songwriter Kate Nash successfully broadened her intimate folk-pop outlook to a more slickly produced, post-Amy Winehouse neo-soul sound. The change intrigued some and displeased others, but overall it proved that Nash (who was only 20 when she recorded her debut) wasn't content to stick to one sound. She was clearly growing up and growing her sound along the way.
“You’ve got a problem with me ’cos I’m a girl. I’m a FEMINIST. And if that offends you… THEN FUCK YOU.” All rise, brothers and sisters, because Kate Nash is back and she has things to say.‘WHAT’S HAPPENED TO KATE NASH?’ the internet wailed after she posted her comeback track ‘Under-Estimate The Girl’ (which doesn’t appear here) – a grunge-infused jam with a screw-you screech of a chorus that left certain corners of the web wondering where the whippet-tongued comrade of Lily Allen et al had gone.
At 25, English singer-songwriter Kate Nash is still figuring out what she likes musically and, most of all, who she is. She’s doing what most artists who became famous at a young age eventually do, which is to say that she’s rebelling against what made her famous. A darling of the British press before she was 20, Nash is no longer signed to a major label and instead crowd-funded her new album, Girl Talk, online.
Last year, Kate Nash released a new single, Under-Estimate The Girl, via the internet. A sprawling, snarling mess of a song written and recorded in less than 24 hours, it was perhaps one of the most confrontational pieces of music ever released by a hitherto mainstream artist. Under-Estimate The Girl isn’t included on Nash’s third album, Girl Talk.
Kate Nash is properly pissed off. But we already knew that, after that ‘Under-Estimate The Girl’ video. Mind you, the sight of a snarling, pouting Kate Nash, coupled with all her talk about how inspired she was by Riot Grrrl didn’t do much for our expectations for ‘Girl Talk’; it basically left them entrenched in a ‘low-to-laughable’ zone.
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