Kate Nash refuses to mince her words. Known for her in-your-face lyrics and sweary Mary on-stage rants, the Londoner tells TONY CLAYTON-LEAthat it's good to be back
USING THE grandmother rule, Kate Nash is definitely one of ours. Sure, Nash’s accent is more Tower of London than Ballymun towers but, thanks to an Irish mother and granny, her upbringing in Harrow was immersed in all things Irish, including traditional dancing every weekend and a love of folk music that still stands to her. Nash even plays the tin whistle and bodhrán! How Irish is that, mister?
Her emergence into pop music occurred by accident a few years ago. Having graduated from Croydon's Brit school (former alumni include Amy Winehouse and Katie Melua), and following two years of weekend study at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, the budding thespian was refused admission to the Bristol Old Vic. In a perverse attempt to cheer herself up, Nash went to see Brokeback Mountain. Arriving home, she promptly fell down the stairs and broke her leg.
As an antidote to impending boredom, Nash's parents bought her a guitar, she loaded up GarageBand onto her laptop, and before you could sing a dodgy version of The Lakes of Pontchartrainshe had fleshed out a few naive-art pop songs that mixed the vernacular charms of Harrow with the folksy sensibilities of Laurel Canyon.
Nash's 2007 debut album, Made of Bricks, brought her into the spotlight as a singer- songwriter with a few rough edges and more than several interesting notions about how pop music should sound. Her latest album, My Best Friend Is You, comes across as a broad, natural extension – not so much a creative leap as a sprint.
“I think it’s important to grow and develop,” she says, “and not get stuck in the same comfortable patterns. There is a danger that people end up in that position, and because of that it’s something I’ve made sure I don’t do. I get too bored if I do the same things. I mean, lyrically, the new album is kinda the same but different. It felt natural, because I felt like I’d grown somewhat as a songwriter, anyway.
“Some people’s perceptions of what lyrics are is that they have to rhyme, but for me it depends on what the theme is, and, you know, the words have to be right for the song – it depends on the entire point of the song. I also don’t bother with a Thesaurus – maybe if I run out of words, but that hasn’t happened yet.”
It’s interesting that Nash has chosen the new album to harden her approach. When she first appeared on the scene, she rocked the soft-focused Laura Ashley demeanour; these days she’s a shade more subversive, a tad tougher.
“There was a little bit more anger and aggression from certain things I experienced,” she says. “Everyone has different feelings and mood swings, so you’re never one distinct thing at the same time. It’s important to get all of those feelings out. Otherwise you’ll repress something and that’s never good.
“I don’t like to repress anything, which I’m aware is occasionally not good for radio play, but to be honest I’m not so sure what constitutes radio play these days – apart from the very obvious. What radio will or won’t play changes constantly, and if you’re trying hard to get radio play then you’ll probably write something you don’t care about. You’ll probably fail, anyway!
“All my favourite artists are people who are rarely played on the radio. Besides, it’s cooler when you create something for yourself and not for other people. I’ve never been a conformist, and I’m not starting now.”
One track on My Best Friend Is Yousticks out like a sore thumb – for all the right reasons, Mansion Songis an X-rated anti-pop rant that won't be featuring on daytime radio anytime soon.
“The song was influenced by touring, and me seeing aspects of groupie culture, people just selling themselves short. Seeing some girls doing totally unnecessary things made me so sad; girls who a lot of people think are idiots and twats, and who have no respect for themselves, but who are actually quite smart and interesting if they weren’t into filling some emptiness inside them.”
Mansion Songconsciously lashes out at its targets. Nash says she deliberately wanted to do something different and assertive, something that was a radical, apparently uncharacteristic change from the sweet charm of her debut. She points to a chat with renowned US cult act Lydia Lunch as an influence.
"It's good to turn things on their head, and the point of Mansion Songis to highlight outrage with outrage. Lydia was saying that songwriting for her is like a cleansing of all the rubbish in her system. So writing Mansion Songwas like therapy for me, in a way, and while I wouldn't do anything specifically to shock people, I also wouldn't not do it in case it shocked them as well."
Has she ever censored any of her songs prior to committing them to release? "No, I don't think so, not past having written it, anyway. It would be an easy thing to do, and I can understand why some people might do it, but you should just go with the decision and don't look back. I feel proud of Mansion Song; it's an important one for me. It has a message that I really care about.
"Some people ask me, do I see it as being offensive, particularly to my younger female fans. I can understand that it's explicit; I'm not trying to pretend it isn't, and that some parents are not going to be happy that their kids listen to it. But kids are eventually going to find out words and what they mean – from their school, from television, from the internet. The message of the song is, I feel, very empowering, very positive, particularly for young girls. And no matter what words are in there, there's nothing as offensive as a song like Don't Cha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?"
And what about the lifestyle, Kate? You’ve gone from ingenue to the not very new kid on the block, from music school shows to big stages, from B&Bs to five-star hotels. Do you take all of this malarkey with a pinch of salt?
“There are elements you enjoy,” she concedes, “and you have to because you shouldn’t take things too seriously. On tour, you do what you have to do, be it hotels or sleeping on the bus. I wouldn’t say it was flashy at all, to be honest. Also, I travel so much that if I have a chance to be at home, then I’m at home, not at some event where I can’t be myself.
“Celebrity stuff? I can’t be arsed with that, mate.”
- Kate Nash plays Dolan's Warehouse, Limerick on October 8th; Mandela Hall, Belfast on October 9th; and The Academy, Dublin on October 10th
