From the first lines of the ebullient opener You’ll Never Listen, taken from Kate Nash’s second album, it is apparent that Miss Nash has made the transition from bedroom blogger and ingenue to young woman on a mission. The song and the album are all at once classic Nash but it is quite clear that though the redhead still smells like teen spirit, now there are definite and fragrant top notes of the woman she is growing into.
From the outset Kate knew where she wanted go on this her second outing but after the tremendous success and fun she had during 2007 with her debut Made of Bricks, she needed to take time out. And so in her ‘gap year’, Kate kept herself busy doing “normal things”.
As well as finding her first flat, learning to drive and looking after her pet rabbit Fluffy, Kate learned to play drums and also made time to focus on all the music she’d always loved and connected with. She found time to develop her taste and crucially she tapped into an already fully grown sense of responsibility. She became a founder member of The Featured Artists Coalition, a body set up to watch over the rights of musicians.
Wanting to do something honest with her earnings Kate began a foundation for struggling artists which she called, ‘Have 10p’. The idea was to enable people with artistic aspirations to have the funding and thereby the means to create something rather than struggling in day jobs.
Finally Kate also became a patron and mentor at a young women’s shelter in Harrow called The Wish Centre; discovering that the shelter received no funding and the most they’d ever been given was £40, Kate mobilised her musician friends (Billy Bragg, Edwyn Collins, her side project The Receeders - for whom she plays bass) and threw a charity gig for The Wish Centre raising more than 100 times that amount on the night.
So as with most people’s experiences on their gap year, all of this went on to inform and shape what Kate did next and Kate’s album is inevitably all about growing up, taking responsibility for yourself and your actions, being a human and standing up to right the world’s wrongs... and of course falling in love.
The first single from the album will be Do Wah Doo released on Monday 12th April 2010 and her sophomore album will be released on Fiction Records on Monday 19th April.
