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My Books
Outlaw Territory
(with Melike Acar)
24Seven Vol. 2
(with Walter Pax & Jack Kaminski)
24Seven
(with Ben Templesmith)
Complete story - "The Workman"
(courtesy of New York Magazine)
Enough already
At MTV’s insistence (read: the most annoyingly pushy marketing campaign I’ve ever seen), I have listened to the Kate Nash album.
“Merry Happy” is a good song. “Birds” is almost a good song. The rest of it? Crap.
Total crap.
Update: Gave it another selective listen. “Birds” actually is a good song. And the hidden track after “Merry Happy” is excellent (didn’t hear it the first time through).
I still hated that ad push. (Although when they spliced her into the CLOVERFIELD commercial, it did prompt me to say, “Approximately one hour ago, a coquettish singer-songwriter attacked the city…” And that was kind of funny.)
2 Responses to “Enough already”
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January 15th, 2008 at 11:17 am
From KG’s Tracks of the year list, standard disclaimers apply because Gillen is basically a teenage girl…
”
1 - Kate Nash, Birds
Don’t start me about the Slide-guitar.
Even more so than Robyn, hearing that Foundations had gone in at Number 2 was a complete fucking shock than left me telling friends this new and bizarre fact. Which usually lead to the response “Who’s Kate Nash?â€. One minute, minor indie singer/songwriter with a neat vein in observational/dialogue based songs who McKelvie bounced a few MySpace messages with and I was planning to go and see at the 100-person-or-so Louisiana the month previous before she cancelled with a cold. Next, she’s the new Lily Allen. WTF!?!?!?!
Made of Bricks – and that’s a very Nash piece of demystification fuck-youing, which reached its apogee on the confrontational in its banality of later single Mouthwash - was a patchy album, with not enough material and some fucking terrible production (Seriously, don’t mention the Slide Guitar), but the best stuff… well, it’s some of the best stuff. Foundation is an entirely justified success, cruel and human and painfully insightful. As a friend who I spent much of the year swapping e-mails on Nash argued, the difference between Allen and Nash (putting aside musical ones. Their music is simply from completely different places) is that – at the time of their song writing – Allen was an early twenty-something who wrote with the perceptions of a teenager while Nash was a teenager writing a few significantly years older.
The key lyric which gained comparisons between the pair said everything, if only anyone was paying attention. Allen’s was a hymn you glorious annihilation of the other – just simply revelling in the revenge fantasy, smiling at the tears of the Ex. Nash’ was about feeling bad when she smiles at the upset lover. This is the world of difference, as one is a fun fantasy – I like Smile – and the other is a utterly pitiful, utterly precise piece of pop-surgery on a relationship. In Foundations, the juxtaposition between the mounting irritation and snarls of the verses and the chorus’ regret is the terminal point of a relationship nailed through the chest with a pin, and left to squirm.
Foundations is a great single. In other years, it would have been top 10. Hell, in some other years, it could have been #1. I’m glad it’s not those years.
Instead, it’s Birds.
Not the album version of Birds, but the one on the AA-side of her first limited edition single, on the flip of the joke-track Caroline’s A Victim. (As an aside, the NME’s lambasting of Nash for releasing such a terrible single made me laugh often and snarl a bit more. Listening to the flip was just too much effort, yeah?). The album version, while acceptable enough, kills some of the key aspects of the song. And the Slide Guitar, which I’m not talking about.
Like Foundations, Birds is a dialogue song, sung between two relatively inarticulate characters. It’s a love song, but positioned at the other end of a relationship. In that, it’s a capital-L Love Song. It’s about being in love, not that any of the characters would admit as much.
(I suspect I’ve said it before, but trying to write an authentic love song is the hardest thing for a songwriter to attempt. Because, unless the audience is hopelessly uncynical , they won’t buy into it and the lyrics will be at worst a total turn off and at best, just a noise to the tune, the equivalent of going la-la-la.)
The arrangement is simple – guitar, and occasional plonky things (Music Critic term, don’t you know). It allows the story to sit by itself, slowing down on the exchanges between the characters, to give natural pauses and allow the punchlines to connect – which Nash sells elegantly, giving each character space to be themselves.
The key moment is when, after a series of problems, they’ve eventually got to talking, and he explains, at great length how he feels about her. The section follows the verses melody,, which wanders hopelessly, and sounds desperately unconvincing with his faux-sensitive vocals.
There’s a pause.
Her reply: The most perfectly timed WOT?
Okay, he says, Let me try to explain again.
And then we have the chorus, which uses the simplest metaphors which takes detours into shitting-on-head bathos, before turning to his point. And, to make it all the more perfect, it starts with a “Rightâ€. And making it more perfect than that, it hits its own climbing increasingly elated melody. And making it even MORE perfect, we have the plonky things join in, as immortal as Acetone. From then on, it’s all pay off. She’s Wotting, but sounds weakening, and he’s persisted in his YOUS, uncaring, devoted, honest. Eventually, she’s convinced: “Thanks – I like you too.†To which, he can only responds: “Coolâ€.
To quote the bard: Can I make it any more obvious?
Birds is carefully measured in its inarticulacy, measured enough for us to fill the gaps, knowing we’d be no better, and being any better is a lie. And Birds is a song brave enough not to lie, about being brave enough not to lie, and listening to it makes me think I can be brave too, and believe that bravery is worth something and that people are worth being brave over.
As such, Birds has to be my song of the year.”
January 15th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Gillen’s right. The genius of the song is in that exchange — after a lot of really pedestrian “we did this and then we did this” crap, the boy breaks into this incredibly poetic, romantic statement of feeling — slightly awkward, but still heart-felt and beautiful — and the girl is simultaneously touched and embarrassed by it. It’s an incredibly complex sentiment and one that I don’t think I’ve ever heard in a pop song before. It’s proof that realistic doesn’t have to mean bitter.
Of course, Gillen also thinks Scout Niblett has talent, meaning that all his music opinions are now suspect.