Kate Nash - Made of Bricks

Kate Nash, whose debut "Made of Bricks" was released stateside on Tuesday, was the darling of the British music scene for most of 2007. She popped up regularly in NME and Q, two of the UK’s most influential (if not always trustworthy) magazines, and both her debut album and single, the catchy-as-wildfire piano pop of ‘Foundations,’ rocketed straight to the top of the British charts and made themselves well at home there. Unsurprisingly then, I had high hopes for the album. I’d heard she was a bit like Lily Allen – not a problem in my books, I have to say – and ‘Foundations,’ even if it was suspiciously similar to Allen’s ubiquitous ‘Smile,’ was promising, with an innocent, off-the-cuff charm that’s hard to come by in the Timbaland-monopolised pop world of 2007. Sadly, I have to report that Nash’s album is not only a disappointment, it’s a catastrophe, one of the most embarrassing and immature records I’ve ever had the displeasure to listen to.

The funny thing is, the album starts off incredibly well, with the offbeat, Hot Chip-like experimentalism of ‘Play,’ in which Nash tells us that she “[likes] to play” over grimy break-beats and high-energy keyboard riffing. On the second track, Nash wittily undercuts the tension with the simple, sugar-sweet pop of ‘Foundations,’ which I’m sure you’ll hear soon if you haven’t already. With its instantly memorable chorus, sunshine-bright demeanour, and a couple of lines cribbed directly from Lily Allen, it’s bound to be a hit; you’ll be humming “My finger tips are holding onto the cracks in our foundation” for weeks. After that though, it’s straight downhill, and for one simple reason: lurking within "Made of Bricks" are some of the worst lyrics I’ve ever heard on a mainstream record.

Now, Nash is hardly original musically. Almost everything here is pretty safe, glossily-produced piano pop, from the chirpy ‘Foundations’ to the soggy sentiment of ‘We Get On’ to the horrendously bland power chords of ‘Mouthwash.’ When she gets off the piano stool it’s equally unadventurous, as shown by synthetic guitar ballads like ‘Birds’ and ‘Dickhead.’ And in the rare occasions she does stray into more experimental territory, she falls flat on her face, as shown by the clunky, repetitive electro of ‘Pumpkin Soup.’ But forget the music for a moment. Sure, it’s bland, but it’s hardly offensive. The lyrics though…now they’re something else.

Take, for instance, ‘Mouthwash.’ Here, Nash decides to write a power pop ballad whose triumphant chorus, swathed in synthesizers and ecstatic percussion, involves her telling us that “I use mouthwash, sometimes I floss, I have a family, and drink cups of tea.” And that’s just the beginning. A few tracks later we get to the hair-raisingly awful ‘Birds,’ in which Nash she tells us four times over that “birds can fly so high and they can shit on your head” – apparently a metaphor for love, because love, like a bird, can both fly and shit. Ahem.

Moving on, we come to the cringe-inducing double-whammy of ‘Shit Song’ and ‘Skeleton Song.’ Now, though the wonderfully-titled ‘Shit Song’ is one of the musical highlights of the album, with edgy synths and punchy drum-work providing some respite from all the blandness, the lyrics just kill it. Here’s the chorus: “Darling don't give me shit / cos I know that you’re full of it.” This is followed by Nash’s monotonous backing vocals, which remind us, in case we’d forgotten that “you’re full of shit, you’re full of shit.” It’s poetry! ‘Skeleton Song,’ meanwhile, is even more cringe-worthy, opening with the lyrical gem “skeleton you are my friend but you are made of bone,” and continuing on in much the same hilariously clumsy vein.

However, the real offender here- the song that will, I promise, have you laughing out loud in the street- is the album’s fourth track, the cataclysmically awful ‘Dickhead.’ Maybe I should have guessed from the title that the song wouldn’t exactly be rivalling Bob Dylan for lyrical complexity, but I don’t think I could have guessed the depths Nash plumbs on here. She opens up the song by asking her boyfriend “why you being a dickhead for” (Grammar! Grammar!), and why he “keep[s] on fucking up situations.” Seemingly convinced that this lyric is a work of genius, Nash then proceeds to repeat the whole verse again, so that within the first thirty seconds of the song, she’s used the word “dickhead” six times. That’s one “dickhead” every five seconds. That’s a lot. And as soon as she’s done with that gem of a verse, she moves on to implore her boyfriend to be “more intelligent so you could see what you’re doing is so shitty, to me.” It hurts. It really does.

Now, if the music worked well with the lyrics, maybe gave us a ‘wink wink’ hint that the whole album’s meant to be taken tongue in cheek, then I might be tempted to restrain my criticism somewhat. Certainly the musical invention and wittiness that characterised Lily Allen’s "Alright, Still" showed that its occasionally dodgy lyrics were meant to be taken in jest, as silly, sarcastic throwaways. But Nash doesn’t make it clear that the whole thing’s a big joke – which would really be the only way of excusing such appalling lyrics. Instead, she surrounds her clunky, affected vignettes in a distant, over-produced haze of glossy power chords and seemingly earnest vocals. Occasionally, a knowing smirk does manage to claw its way out of the blandness. On the irresistible ‘Foundations,’ she delivers the line “I must eat so many lemons, cos I am so bitter” with her cockney twang stretched to an absurd degree, and it’s clear that tongue is stuck firmly in cheek. But on other songs – I’m thinking particularly of ‘Mouthwash’ and ‘Dickhead’ here – all the acerbic humour that Nash clearly possesses is smoothed over, and in such a context, lyrics like “It was well embarrassing and I think you thought that I was a bit of a twat” can’t help but sound worryingly appropriate.


"Made of Bricks" released 8 January, 2008 by Geffen Records.
Images courtesy of Geffen Records and Empire Online.
Published in the Daily Princetonian.