Album Review: Kate Nash: My Best Friend Is You

Released: April 19, 2010
Charts: 8 (UK)

So you win a Brit award after a rather successful debut album. What do you do next? Rather than take the oft-travelled route of going straight into the second album, Kate Nash wisely sat out for a while and watched the world go by. Some say that you have a lifetime to write your first album and only a few pressure filled months to write your second. Kate Nash decided to take that step back and live life, hoping the music would come to her. What comes from ‘My Best Friend Is You’ is that the music did just that.



The opener ‘Paris’ is bold and confident and shows that Nash still has plenty of the wit and observational humour that her first album was littered with. What’s immediately apparent however is a sense of maturity. ‘Kiss That Grrrl’ and the aforementioned ‘Paris’ have much more going on than Kate’s piano. There is a true sense that she has taken her time to make sure these songs sound just as she wants them rather than a paint by numbers approach that would have been much easier. Fans of the Kate of old will love ‘Don’t You Want To Share The Guilt?’ A good half of the song is a revealing monologue about Nash’s inner thoughts and feelings. It’s just the sort of thing that her detractors hate but she seems to get away with quite convincingly.



However there is almost a schizophrenic feel to the album in some places. It is obviously that Nash’s influences for ‘My Best Friend Is You’ are ranging from 60s girl groups such as the Shirelles right through to Sonic Youth. While the single ‘Do Wah Doo’ is ridiculously feel good and accessible, a track like ‘I Just Love You More’ will surely divide her fanbase. It certainly takes a couple of listens but comes out the other side. If anything the track and the album as a whole is an example of climbing out of your comfort zone and trying to experiment, something that should absolutely be commended when it works on tracks like ‘Take Me to a Higher Plane’



Sometimes however it can be a complete misstep. ‘Mansion Song’, a spoken word piece is simply weird as Nash talks about how much she wants ‘to be fucked and rolled over’. All of this while an opera singer wails in the background. It’d be nice to say I knew where she was going with this one but I didn’t. Never mind eh? However ‘Later On’ brings the album back on track with a 80s synth feeling and a ridiculously catchy chorus, something she seems to be getting very good at crafting. Finishing with a comfortable sounding ‘I Hate Seagulls’ we’re right back with ‘Made of Bricks’ era Kate Nash again. It’s almost as if this album is a battle between what Kate Nash thinks her fans would like to hear and what she wants to record. The production by Bernard Butler makes it flow far easier than it should; that and Kate’s obvious confidence in the material. It makes it a fun album to listen to and proves that like any good artist, Kate Nash isn’t going to stand still. Hopefully the third album will be more of the same time… or rather something completely different.



7.5/10



Best track: Later On