Kate Nash

Early online recordings and the Caroline’s a Victim / Birds single led towards Made of Bricks in 2007. Foundations brought the piano and the voice into especially close contact: the accompaniment keeps its shape while Nash lets the account of a fraying relationship sound untidy and immediate.

Pumpkin Soup shows a different side of the same album, with a more compact pop arrangement and a hook that pushes forward. The voice retains its conversational character even when the surroundings become more polished. That is part of what gives the debut its personality.

My Best Friend Is You followed in 2010, and Girl Talk in 2013 moved further towards a rawer guitar sound. The difference is more than a change of instruments. Sharper textures give the vocal another way to express impatience, vulnerability and humour.

Those records make the early image of Nash as simply a piano-pop storyteller feel too narrow. The writing can carry noise and abrasion as readily as a bright keyboard figure. Its strength is in the specificity of the feeling, rather than in keeping to one tasteful setting.

Kill Rock Stars released 9 Sad Symphonies in 2024, produced and mixed by Frederik Thaae. Orchestral arrangements and Nash’s experience in musical theatre give the songs another sense of space.

The distance from the debut is audible, but the voice still notices the sort of detail a smoother narrator might leave out. That willingness to let a song retain an awkward edge is one of the most consistent things in her work.