My Best Friend Is You

The irrelevant and inconsequential ramblings of a teenage girl set to catchy music. Kate Nash’s first album, Made of Bricks, was an interesting debut. The music was catchy, and the image was in tune with the times, but lyrically it was appalling. Mouthwash and Foundations, the singles released to promo the album, were seemingly what kept Nash around for any longer than the necessary fifteen minutes. So has her second album seen a huge transformation in the London singer? Has she miraculously matured? Has she dropped the Landan-talking, drop-the-T’s-and-forget-the-grammar singing style?

The opening track on My Best Friend Is You bursts through the speakers with unexpected amounts of energy. Nash’s staccato piano style is still there, but the melodies have changed. They’re more upbeat, more carefully ornamented with xylophones and trumpets and the like… it just sounds more mature. Even Nash’s teenage-girl-whining has sort of stopped, and has been replaced with a genuine effort at some heartfelt pop vocals. It’s a fantastic start to the album, which continues in a similar vein. Tracks like Don’t You Want to Share the Guilt? and Take Me to a Higher Plane are more musically developed, and sound much more like pop songs that Nash’s previous tinkering-around-with-a-piano style pop.

This isn’t in any way saying that Nash has lost her style entirely. There’s still that little something that makes her music hers. It comes through in the lyrics and vocal style that she still means business, and she’s still the same girl we always knew, she’s just a matured version, with a better voice and some more profound things to sing about. Only the final track, I Hate Seagulls (or as Nash sings it, I Hate Seaguws), that has a touch of the self indulgent, whiney old style about it – ‘I hate burning my fingers on the toaster and I hate nits’ – and yet set against the rest of the album, it doesn’t sound as immature as it could, and instead ends up as a nice, calm song to finish the record.

All round then, the album is a success as a pop record. It’s an energetic, matured improvement on her former back-bedroom style. There will still be plenty who find Nash as annoying as a wasp at a picnic, but all things considered, My Best Friend is You is definitely worth a listen with a fresh ear. And anyway, at least we can all be thankful she hasn’t ‘gone dance’.