Live music, again... The Pains of Living Life in Frome.

Just joking of course, and with apologies to Brooklyn's 'The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart'.
This post comes from Friday evening - Acoustic Plus, an almost monthly event at The Cheese and Grain. This one, the first of 2012, provided a particularly packed programme - and still all for £5 - starting with vocals, guitar and blues piano courtesy of Sara Coffield and Pete Gage.

Next to play - just five songs, three of them from her recent EP, and two newer still - was Beth Monk. She was clearly very nervous introducing both herself and the songs but once performing she owned them. While she is not the same, and you might even consider the comparison strange, the first thing this made me think of is Kate Nash in the very early days - if you are lucky enough to own the MoshiMoshi 7" singles then perhaps you can see where I am coming from; the lyrical narrative song-writing is not however derivative or, worse still, generic.

Next up, complete with the rarely-seen sousaphone, and joined by Nick on trombone...

... this is the totally instrumental 'Honk Monster'.
  

The next artist was one that I have seen live at Acoustic+ before. Daisy Chapman  is now accompanied by a cellist and it makes a lot of sense.

The clutter that came between them was an unfortunate result of turning five sets around in short order but didn't spoil the music, at least in my opinion, one little bit.

Last but not least was Joe Mulcrone, formerly of Bath but now relocated to Brighton if I remember correctly.
So what is it like to live in Frome?  To those just asking, I'm just saying.

A fascination with lyrics...

This is becoming a theme here and I welcome it. Why have songs with words if no-one cares what they are?

To whoever has just asked about Kate Nash lyrics then those for the album 'Made Of Bricks' are in the sleeve insert of the standard CD released in the UK Fiction/Poyldor (Universal) 1743143. You can also find them here, and this includes the lyric for Birds (see below). My usual warnings about the safety of the site and, less importantly, the reliability of the lyrics apply!

Yesterday someone searched for how to get a download of the first Kate Nash single; released in in early 2007 and before she had a label deal. It was Caroline's A Victim, c/w Birds. This was a limited release, physically only on 7", on the label Moshi Moshi Records as MOMO4. If my memory serves me right it was also available for download (not free) and it may have included a bonus track. Moshi Moshi has recently released a compilation of the hard-to-find 7" releases on CD and it might be on that, along with many other interesting gems.
I can provide the lyrics for either of these tracks if you ask but Caroline's A Victim doesn't really have many anyway.

Finding a copy of the 7" would be a bonus and never say never! An overlooked copy may lurk in the 'bargain bin' of your local record shop because not many people had heard of Kate Nash when it was released and, if one thing is certain, it is that if you don't look then you won't find it. Even in the apparently obvious places there can be surprises, and sometimes at bargain prices, because people in search of items they perceive as hard to find don't look there while those looking for the new releases will look there but not for such items!

To help you find it, this is what you are looking for.

Always a bridesmaid...

The kind of dogged, and very closely fought, battle for the UK #1 single that has been played out over the last six weeks has not been seen since the mid-1980s so, in other words, it simply hasn't been done by any artist in her lifetime!

Two weeks at #2 in the UK charts, a week at #3, and now another three weeks at #2; last week just sixteen sales kept her from the #1 spot and she missed out again today. It is something of a theme: naturally more at home on keyboards, she started writing songs on guitar when laid-up after she broke her foot on a trip to the cinema, which was to distract from/commiserate the fact that she had just been rejected by the 'Bristol Old Vic' stage school.

One faceless (female) exec. for a major label was heard to say, little more than a month ago, "She is so utterly irrelevant... I just don't see the point." and this was the finalé to a rather incomprehensible diatribe on the rise of new female artists. Clearly she felt threatened in some strange way; I can only hope that a 'P45' will provides her with some kind of closure because she deserves nothing less. On the other hand acting's loss is very much music's gain and these bitchy comments were aimed at someone for whom such petty feuds quite simply don't matter any more.
If she does anything at all it will be to write them into a future song and that is certainly not what the villain, now the victim, would wish to hear! She's already playing to far larger audiences and on her own terms - her Autumn 2007 headline tour sold out within hours of the tickets being released - and all that in advance of the release of her début album. Maybe that was part of the problem...

In just six weeks Kate Nash has almost single-handedly demolished a key tenet of the modern (for which read 'late 20th century' if you will) recording industry with her first single to be widely released - 'Foundations'!
I'm sure she didn't plan it this way but the lyric "holding on to the cracks in our foundation" has never seemed more apposite and nothing before it has done more to undermine the industry dinosaurs. It's fun, but also quite serious, and it grew to such prominence largely of its own accord - it virtually sold itself - and a did a very good job of it.

Nash is made of stern stuff and her album "Made Of Bricks" is released tomorrow; distributed by Polydor in the UK. It is incredibly good by the way and if anyone knows of a vinyl release of this album - I can't find one - could you please contact me here asap!

Kate Nash - Latitude 2007 and the blue teapot...

I had such a great time at 'Latitude 2007', overdosing on live music, that it has taken this long to get my head around it all. Well almost a week has gone by and I've finally come to some conclusions! There were so many highlights that my choice of starting place is quite arbitrary...

I've decided to start with Kate Nash who performed in the far too small, and also stiflingly hot, 'Film and Music Tent' on Friday afternoon. Partly because I'd made damn sure I got to see this as I've being enjoying her so-called first single Foundations, and the 'b-sides' - which are all different on the three versions: a CD and two 7" vinyl singles - so much that I already intended to post a comment.

Of course it is not really her first single, that was a double a-side Caroline's A Victim/Birds released by MoshiMoshi Records earlier this year (and I reviewed it - see here) but that was in physical terms only available as a very limited 7" release.

The only question that I still had is can she really cut it as a live performer?

Kate Nash performing Birds live @ Latitude 2007. There was soon no doubt whatsoever that she is every bit as good live as when recorded.

Foundations live with stunning keyboard antics and the blue teapot.

The release of her eponymous début album has now been bought forward from late September to 6th August 2007.

How do you solve a problem like ... Caroline's A Victim?

This clearly has nothing to do with the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of "The Sound Of Music", but it does concern the sound of music. The "problem", in so far as there is perceived to be one, concerns this single that is one side of a double 'A-side' on 7".
If you want the 7" you are going to have to search for a copy but you can also download it here.

A certain amount of effort has gone in to posts claiming that she is "this year's Lily Allen", and indeed she herself has given Kate Nash her full backing, but listen to Caroline's A Victim and you will likely be left wondering why this particular song has any relevance to anything on Alright, Still. You are forgiven that because the answer is that it doesn't!

This is exactly why this single is a double A-side and Birds will seem more accessible to those expecting a modern urban narrative largely backed by semi-acoustic sounds (which she mostly plays herself).
The choice of Caroline's A Victim as the lead single has been questioned by many a reviewer already. I like it and think that it may be a statement of intent given that this is her first commercial recording (it is released on independent label MoshiMoshi [MOMO4]), and it is also a very interesting development. The track itself consists almost entirely of thundering bass and heavy drum parts, plus of course the vocals, and beyond the obvious is heavily influenced by ska, post-punk and a great deal more besides. It is also very curiously addictive and the versatility that it demonstrates is alarming in the context of a 7" single, but the ambition to take such a strange course is actually quite explicable, and maybe even logical. The major labels are circling, but she is holding out and she recently said:

"I'm really stubborn... if I want to write an eight minute song then I'm gonna do it.
I want my album to be eclectic."
(The Fly - February 2007)

In some ways this reminds me of the devil-may-care attitude to music genres that (2007 Brit Award Winner for Best Foreign Female) Nelly Furtado has deployed across her three albums to date. Don't worry if it's folk, funk or whatever else; if it works use it and if it doesn't then consider adapting it so that it does - just as she did quite spectacularly for the 2006 single Maneater, which sampled the Hall and Oates 1982 disco "classic" of the same name taken from the album H2O.
It was a huge hit - including four weeks as UK #1- but it could hardly have been predicted given the content of her second album Folklore, released in late 2003, which somehow managed to split opinions all ways: some people thought it was too folky and not enough pop, while others argued that it was not folky enough to be credible - but even so it has now sold to the tune of 2½ million copies, and counting, worldwide.

The problem is that to do this successfully requires a wide spectrum of musical influences but, based only on these two tracks, it would be unwise to rule Kate Nash out of any equation. Apparently still unsigned, she is currently recording her début album and it could just be very interesting indeed - with or without that eight minute song.