Kate NashThere was a time back in the summer when I was posted something related every week or so. I’ve calmed myself down somewhat since then, but if you’re sick to death of seeing her pop up on here, you should probably skip over this post. It doesn’t really contain any new content music wise, it’s just a way of collecting together a lot of the older songs at a time when there seems to be a lot of demand for them.

It seems kind of wrong to namecheck the same blog two posts in a row, but my Nash adventure begun thanks to Skatterbrain. He posted ‘The Nicest Thing’ back in May. I downloaded it, liked it a lot and explored further. Then I discovered I didn’t really like the other songs on her Myspace, particularly an electronic mess called ‘Caroline’s A Victim’. A couple of weeks of listening to ‘The Nicest Thing’ though, I decided to post it on here. A few more weeks of listening to the other songs increased my appreciation of them, even if I still didn’t really like ‘Victim’.

The songs below are the four songs that aren’t ‘Caroline’s A Victim’ that were made available over the summer. ‘Little Red’ is by far the most complex, a five minute epic with multiple time shifts. ‘Dickhead’ and ‘The Shit Song’ are relatively simplistic songs, but they still make for interesting listening.

Note All of these songs are pretty awful in terms of recording quality. This is unfortunate, but these are the only versions of the songs that were put up onto the net at the time. They really are the definition of lo-fi recording.

MP3 Kate Nash – The Nicest Thing (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash – Little Red (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash – Dickhead (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash – The Shit Song (expired)

Over the past six months, it seems that Kate Nash has turned into something rather big. She’s been constantly gigging in packed venues around London, supported Ben Kweller and was signed by some part of Universal. Since then, she’s been popping up just about everywhere, from XFM to Radio 1 to various magazines, as well as an upcoming playlisting on MTV2. It’s pretty cool watching artists do this, and it was exciting to hear that she’d be releasing a debut single in February. Then I discovered it was ‘Caroline’s A Victim’. Honestly, of all of the songs to pick, why this one? You have a bunch of wonderful, quirky, heartfelt guitar songs, so the one that’s released is the non-sensical electronic one that doesn’t seem to represent anything else she’s recorded. While my rage subsides, please enjoy the video for it below.

Thankfully, it isn’t all bad news though. The single is actually a double a-side with ‘Birds’, one of her finer songs. I’d actually buy the single based on that. Unfortunately, as it’s only on 7″ I won’t be able to. Which means I’ll download an illegal copy instead. All of which is an entirely separate rant you can hear me go off on in an upcoming post. Here’s a video for ‘Birds’. It was recorded live sometime back over the summer, and if you don’t feel like murdering the people talking over it, you’ll hear it’s a rather wonderful little song.

Kate Nash’s debut single, a double a-side 7″ consisting of ‘Caroline’s A Victim’ and ‘Birds’ will be released February 5 on Moshi Moshi Records. You can pre-order it for £2.99 at Rough Trade.

Kate Nash: Myspace

As if that lot wasn’t enough, The Daily Growl has some great quality radio rips of a session Kate recorded for XFM last month. It includes a new version of ‘The Nicest Thing’ and a completely reworked (and far better) version of ‘Caroline’s A Victim’.