My Best Friend Is You

My Best Friend Is You hasn't got the immediate freshness of Made Of Bricks, and it can make for a disorientating, uneven listen at times. Yet it's never anything other than compelling and demonstrates that, despite what a lot of people thought when she first appeared, that Kate Nash could well be around for a good few years yet.

Not only has the sound been plumped up with girl-group strings--for which thank producer Bernard Butler--she's been listening to Bikini Kill and Sonic Youth and is consequently far more daring a writer and singer.

The album moves from infatuation and jealousy to lust and betrayal to real, young love. And it does so with not just the best of intentions-- feminism, anti-homophobia, artistic experimentation-- but also, in the storytelling style of the Streets or Sweden's Hello Saferide, a set of distinctive, well-crafted songs that should strike a chord with self-deprecating teens and twentysomethings.

My Best Friend is You is peppered with pettiness, too, but it's a little more grown-up-and way more amped-up.

Nash is at her best here when she's following The Pipettes back to girl groups' heyday, and while it doesn't end with the bang that it starts with, My Best Friend Is You will make most people wish that their post-teen angst sounded this good.

Largely, though, Nash sounds just like herself, and that's exactly when she shines most brightly.

It feels like a definite upgrade for her, Kate Nash deluxe, courtesy of producer Bernard Butler's expectedly lavish touches. But her standard style of outloud diary readings are not privy to the same overhaul. They prevent it from feeling like much of a progression.

My Best Friend Is You is, indubitably, rather daring for a mainstream pop album. Yet for all the Butler-begat polish, it's hard to work out whether it really is a mainstream pop album.

Longing for a woman's kiss, f-bombing a girl for selling herself short, and tasting the barrel of a gun, Nash is an oversharing spitfire who won't be ignored--not to mention a huge talent.

Now 22, she's full-on pissy and proud, pulling from some reliable forebears on this fascinating follow-up.

Nash is at her best when she brings that vicious bite into what might otherwise sound like a pop trifle....When she rebels a bit too aggressively against pop conventions, though, Nash gets herself into trouble.

The aim over too much of this record seems to be simply getting Kate Nash airplay without worrying overly much about a musical backing that suits her songwriting.

Disappointingly, she doesn't go all the way with this new, abrasive approach. Instead, she lets ex-Suede guitarist and Duffy mastermind Bernard Butler smother the album with corny string and brass sections that try but fail to impose a 60s girl-group aesthetic.

Mockney songbird grows up--but is she any wiser?

Coming of age delayed for guile-free pop star. [May 2010, p. 95]

The hit-and-miss nature of her words wouldn't be so noticeable if the music was more of a distraction. But the skittering sub-Motown fare accompanying much of this album fails to muster a chorus worth savouring.

While it's clear that Nash's skills have advanced light years since Made of Bricks' bang-it-out musicality, one can't help but wish she'd finally figure out what the hell it is she's trying to say.