I have quite a history with the music of Kate Nash - from way back. It started with a slightly scrappy but infinitely charming set of songs in a small grubby tent sponsored by MySpace at Electric Gardens festival in 2006 where I chatted to her afterwards and suggested that she was like the British version of Regina Spektor. Now here I am 10 years on, pressing play on her new song, with a sense of trepidation and excitement – because that what happens when you become a fan of an artist.
Since that first gig there have been many highs. My two fondest memories being when Foundations went into the charts at Number 2 (quite unexpectedly) and, not quite so long ago, a euphoric and energetic gig at Shepherds Bush Empire the highlight of which was Kate crowd surfing to pretty much the back of the room. There’s also been the occasional low; although I loved the idea of Kate rejecting commercial pop music and embracing the spirit of riot girl and punk, I didn’t enjoy Underestimate The Girl at all. However, as I suggested in a blog post at the time (here), what would you rather do, spend your whole life being unhappy trying to be what people expected you to be or happy just being yourself?
So what does Kate Nash 2016 bring? After all she’s never been an artist to just do ‘more of the same’ – right from her very first schizo-pop single on Moshi Moshi that veered from pretty acoustic songwriting to the off-kilter beats and space weirdness of Caroline’s A Victim.
The answer is that Good Summer is Kate’s most easily accessible song for years. In 2016 where contemporary pop music seems to be designed by committee to sound as in your face as everything else around, Good Summer seems almost lightweight in its nature – and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. All the important ingredients are there; melody, hooks, something that makes you feel good about life, but with it there comes an uncanny charm and a likeability that’s formed through its relative simplicity. Good Summer doesn’t shout ‘I need to be in the charts so I’m going to sound like everything else’, instead it stands to the side and just gets on with the job of being an excellent pop tune. Oh and the video, a very old fashioned British garden party, finds amongst it's scenes of fun, Kate bashing what looks like a giant lemon shaped pinata (maybe because these days she's not so bitter?). It's good to have Kate back, and with a previously announced tour and more songs on the way, summer just got good.
Kate Nash - Good Summer (Video)
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