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Posts tagged Kate Nash
Kate Nash’s ‘Foundations’ remixed by Metronomy
54 years ago
in MP3s
I used to hate the whole remix concept, but I’ve been turned around on it over the past year. While a lot of remixes are pretty worthless, there are also a good number of them that do have some merit as works of their own. One of the more prolific of these remixers has been Metronomy, who has come up with new versions of songs by pretty much everyone. Architecture in Helsinki, Klaxons, Gorillaz, Dntel and The Teenagers (making these last few posts one big circle jerk) and now Kate Nash have had their songs turned into something completely different.
If I’m honest, this didn’t do a lot for me on the first couple of listens, but I’m getting quite into it now. This was probably because it’s so startlingly different to the original that it takes some getting used to. The piano has been stripped out entirely, as has the upbeat nature of the song. Instead we’re left with something far more sombre, employing vocal effects as well as adding a repetitive backing vocal and a heavy beat. Get past the differences though and there’s something very good here. Not quite up to the original, but a fun attempt nonetheless.
MP3 Kate Nash – Foundations (Metronomy remix) (expired)
Back tomorrow
4Yes, I’ve been gone for several weeks again. Among the list of lame excuses this time around:
- My continuing recovery from an ear infection.
- My computer only playing music out of one speaker, which makes listening to music a bit more challenging.
- The death and subsequent replacement of my car, followed by multiple return trips to the dealer to sort out random niggles.
- Going to the Great Escape festival in Brighton, where I spectacularly managed to see no more than a handful of bands.
I’m also incredibly lazy, and these things have unfortunately had to take priority. Tomorrow though, normal service will resume. For real this time, with posts every day and everything. Of course I’m sure it’ll last only a few days before I fall off the wagon again, but boy is there going to be some good stuff before I do.
Without getting all self-satisified, I’d also like to point out that from tomorrow, this blog will be going 100% legal in the music that I post. It’s been pretty close to that for a while now, only posting commercial tracks occasionally, but I’m finally going to take the plunge into legality and see how it works out. This will probably mean more obscure bands and songs at times, unless of course the major labels get on board with this free music thing. I’ll also probably end up cheating by including things like Youtube video content instead too, like this lovely new video from Kate Nash below:
It’s called Foundations and it’s probably only being released on vinyl or something, but who cares? It’s catchy as hell, and most importantly, it’s not Caroline’s a Fucking Victim. And if a lovely, lovely person would like to send me an mp3 of it (you can ignore this now – thanks to everyone that hooked me up!), I’d be their bestest friend forever.
In the meantime, go and check out some cool new kids on the indie bloggering scene like Fucking Dance and Hi-Fi Heart. Both are writing about great music in an entertaining way, so go and say hello or something.
..and what’s the deal with.. vinyl releases?
195 years ago
in Music
Los Campesinos!
Sky Larkin
Kate Nash
The Indelicates
Johnny Foreigner
What do all of these artists have in common? It isn’t that they are all great, even if that is indeed the case. It’s that I am a big fan of all of them and yet I don’t own a single thing that they have released. Why not? Because all of their releases are on vinyl.
Technically Los Campesinos!, Sky Larkin and Kate Nash haven’t actually released anything yet, but in the coming weeks they will all release debut singles. All of these will be on the 7″ format. I don’t know a great deal about how the industry works on a financial level, but can someone explain to me exactly why this is the case? Surely a CD is far cheaper to produce than vinyl, and surely more people have access to CD players than to record players. So what possible reason is there for cutting out a chunk of the market?
You could argue that there is always a digital alternative as most of these songs will made available as downloads at the same time. I’m sorry though, but the day I pay £1 for a DRM infested piece of crap from iTunes will be the day that I’m done with music. It isn’t an elitist “I want a tangiable product” thing, however nice that is. I understand that for small bands digital distribution is a fantastic thing, and would support it, if only I could do whatever I wanted with the songs I’d paid for on whatever devices I choose to.
All of which leaves me with no legal means with which to obtain releases from the above artists. This essentially forces my hand into downloading copies, which really doesn’t help anybody. It’s actually getting to the point where I’m considering getting a basic record player (and whatever I’d need to rip them to mp3) just to be able to get hold of these releases. Which all seems a bit silly in this day and age.
So can anyone explain this to me? Is there a good reason for the upsurge in vinyl releases? Am I missing out on something spectacular?
Kate Nash: Early recordings, videos, more..
9
There was a time back in the summer when I was posted something Kate Nash 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’.
Top 49 Songs of 2006: #9-1
55 years ago
in Best of 2006, MP3s
#9
Hello Saferide
‘The Quiz’
Download MP3 (expired)
I only discovered Hello Saferide at the end of the year so I haven’t had the chance to write a full post yet, but very few artists have grabbed my attention to the same degree in the past year. Hello Saferide is the solo project of Annika Norlin, a singer songwriter from Sweden. What appeals to me most is that each song has a ton of personality shining through. Norlin isn’t afraid to project herself entirely into her songs, leaving each one with a kind of brutal honesty. The darkness of this is countered by a ton of little knowing references and quirks that just make the whole thing seem so real. At the forefront of this is ‘The Quiz’, the first song from her recent ‘Would You Let Me Play This EP Ten Times A Day?’ EP. She’s found a guy that she gets on well with and likes (even if he has a bit too much scifi in his shelf of DVDs). She’s vulnerable though so she puts together a quiz for him, with questions that range from the mundane (“Do you talk in the middle of Seinfeld?”) to the insecure (“Do you still keep pictures of old girlfriends? / Are they prettier than me?”) to the all important (“If I’d fall / Would you pick me up?”). Kind of a far less annoying version of Alanis’ ’21 Things I Want In A Lover’.
#8
Art Brut
‘Nag Nag Nag Nag’
Download MP3 (expired)
There isn’t really anything new here to the Art Brut formula, but surely that’s half the point? I had minor fears about new material not being a patch on the first album because the novelty would wear off, but despite it’s similarities, ‘Nag Nag Nag Nag’ works just as well for me as the old stuff. The whole thing can be seen as the story of ‘My Little Brother’ after the guy grows up, although I have no idea if that was intentional. Anyway, the Art Brut style remains the same as it was before: driving guitars, random bursts of energy and a witty song about a music dork delivered in Eddie Argos’ usual half-talking, half-shouting, half-singing (yes, I’m aware that’s three halves) style.
#7
4 or 5 Magicians
‘Forever On The Edge’
Download MP3 (expired)
Website
Myspace
“4 or 5 Magicians are a four piece, led by Dan Ormsby, who did pretty much everything on their recorded songs, and takes charge of vocals and guitar duty when the band play live. The most obvious thing in Ormsby is that he has based his style on an influence not often seen in British bands: Stephen Malkmus. ‘Forever On The Edge’ has “slacker anthem” written all over it. A brash, honest song about wasting one’s life and almost depending on becoming famous to be successful (”I’m wasting my time in this band / Pinning all my hopes on getting signed / Well it could happen / Some idiot might sign us”). It’s this kind of witty, self-aware writing that first drew me to the band, and that they have the sound to back it up is even better.” – originally posted July 18.
#6
Belle & Sebastian
‘Funny Little Frog’
Download MP3 (expired)
Website
Myspace
By far the best song on ‘The Life Pursuit’ and one of the finest that Belle and Sebastian have put out in years. The usual B&S staples are here, as well as a couple of new things like a piano, which they really don’t utilise anywhere near enough. Murdoch really throws himself into the vocals too, giving one of his strongest performances since ‘Your Cover’s Blown’. It’s either the official theme song for stalking or a love letter to the Virgin Mary depending on how you listen, bringing just over three minutes of perfection.
#5
Voxtrot
‘The Start of Something’
Download MP3 (expired)
I know this technically was released in 2005, but the ‘Raised By Wolves’ EP it’s taken from didn’t get released in the UK until 2006, so I’m going to go with that excuse. Anyway, if you’ve read more than a handful of music blog in your lifetime you’re probably aware of who they are and who they sound like. This one sounds rather like The Smiths, and it’s incredibly good, particularly given that I don’t like The Smiths very much. I’m not entirely sure what it all means, as it seems to change focus an awful lot, but it’s full of wonderful imagery that’s delivered beautifully. If a full album next year doesn’t make them explode into the limelight Death Cab style, I’ll be very surprised.
#4
Kate Nash
‘The Nicest Thing’
Download MP3 (expired)
Website
Myspace
“‘The Nicest Thing’ is up there with the best new songs that I have heard this year. It’s her most stripped down effort, just a sparse acoustic guitar and her voice, which helps an awful lot. This allows her voice, which manages to be both mournful and grounded at the same time, to become the centrepiece of the song. There is also a wonderful knack for random conversational lyrics here (”I wish that you needed me / I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three”). Granted the production is pretty awful here, with the vocals becoming distorted in the louder parts, but even through that the strength of this song shines through. If it were to be cleaned up a little in a studio, it could be amazing.” – originally posted June 15.
#3
The Young Republic
‘Girl From The Northern States’
Download MP3 (expired)
The Young Republic are an eight piece (I’m sure there used to be nine though) indie folk pop band from Boston. If you’ve ever been through this blog before, you will have read me rambling about them on a fairly regular basis, so I’ll spare you here. Despite finding it very early on in the year, ‘Girl From The Northern States’ is still one of my most regularly played songs. It’s a gentle, melancholy tale of lost love that sounds more cheerful than it really has any right to. Combine this with a delightful orchestral background and you’ve got what is, for me, an almost perfect pop song.
#2
The Light Footwork
‘The Art of Everyday Communication Part 1′
Download MP3 (expired)
The Light Footwork were the perfect example of why I started this blog in the first place. Pushing a band as good them onto unsuspecting readers is what makes this whole thing so worthwhile. A lot of songs come and go, but there are some that grab you immediately and never let go. ‘The Art of Everyday Communication Part 1′ is one of those. It starts off interestingly enough and then jumps up a gear a little way in, morphing into an entirely different song. Constantly time shifting and styles and pitch perfect male-female vocals make for an always surprising but constantly enjoyable listen.
#1
Los Campesinos!
‘You! Me! Dancing!’
Download MP3 (expired)
Website
Myspace
“Los Campesinos! are a seven-piece from Cardiff who have seemingly already mastered how to make the perfect pop song. Best of all, they manage to bring a glockenspiel to the proceedings. Standout song ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ is just sheer joy from start to finish, it’s six and a half minute runtime actually feeling like half that. Jangly guitars combined with harmonising combined with witty, gleeful lyrics, and you’ve got a winning combination.” – originally posted July 4.
I wrote that six months ago and I’ve only grown to love this band even more in the time since. During which I’ve posted more songs from them, including fun things like a Pavement cover and other songs have turned up on the net. I saw them live back in September and will be doing so again in March. When I (and a number of other blogs) first wrote about them, they had around 600 friends on Myspace. They now have over 3000. At that time, they had no label and just a four track demo. They are now signed to Wichita and will be releasing their debut double a-side single in the new year. It cost me £3 to see them last time. It’s going to cost £6.50 this time. What I’m getting at here is that Los Campesinos! have been by far the biggest success story of 2006. Few bands arrive so fully formed and garner so much attention so quickly. I can think of nowhere more deserving though. 2007 should be a hell of a year for them, and us.
—
Well that’s my favourite nine songs of the year. It turned into a little bit of a slog toward the end, but I’m pleased with how it all turned out in the end. This brings to an end any kind of organised posting structure until this kind of time last year. This will probably be the last thing that I post in 2006, so I’ll wish you all a happy calender change now. This year has been a hell of a lot of fun for me, and this blog has been a big part of that. So thanks to everybody that stopped by, even if it was just to grab the songs. I’ve got a lot of great music to write about in the early days of 2007, so come on back and let me share the good music with you.
July: The Leftovers
05 years ago
in MP3s
I get through a lot of music in a month, which is probably obvious given I have to find material for this thing constantly. A lot of what I hear is rubbish. A reasonable amount is great and that’s the part that ends up being featured on the blog. There’s also a third section though: simply good music that I don’t write about for a number of reasons. This could be that I’ve just featured someone and then found a new song, or it’s an older band that everyone already knows that I only just discovered. Whatever the reason, it’s good music, so I’m going to start including it here. At the end of each month, I’m going to feature these “leftovers”. Seeing as July was such a good month for music, there’s some fantastic little songs here.
MP3 Kate Nash – Little Red (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash – The Shit Song (expired)
I’ve written endlessly about Kate Nash in the past, so I didn’t include these songs on the blog before. One is a new song, the other is one that wasn’t previously available for download. Both now are though, so they are going up here. ‘The Shit Song’ is the new one that is pretty simplistic (the chrous is basically “don’t give me shit because you’re full of it”), but it’s pretty fun, and at only two minutes, doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. ‘Little Red’ is pretty much the most developed song so far from Nash though. The piano jumps all over the place, the lyrics are the most complex so far and her voice is sounding more and more confident. The sound quality is once again pretty poor on both of these, but apparently she’ll be recording some higher quality ones soon. Which will probably give me another excuse to include them on here.
MP3 Destroyer – Your Blood (expired)
I avoided Destroyer for the longest time. It was one of those things where I had a massively wrong impression about what kind of music it was. I know I shouldn’t do that, but once you get an idea stuck in your head, it’s pretty hard to get past it. For some reason I believed Destroyer was some abstract instrumental group or something, and that kept me away. I have no idea why I thought that, particularly given that I quite like The New Pornographers. I really should have known that it was one of the guys from there, but there you go. Seems I can be ignorant too. The best part about this for me has been discovering a wonderful new project. Particularly given that I find The New Pornographers kind of dull when hearing more than a couple of songs at a time, but these songs are far more enjoyable. ‘Your Blood’ is about my favourite so far, but I’ve still got a lot more material to get through.
MP3 The Pipettes – We Are The Pipettes (expired)
The Pipettes are another band that I’m somewhat late to the party on. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I first heard them a couple of years ago performing a live set on XFM, and thought they sounded great. Then I downloaded some songs and found them kind of dull. An impression that stuck even through this year’s blog explosion and excellent reviews. I heard one song the other day though and I really enjoyed it, so I got some more, and they are far better than I recall. Whether this is thanks to a change in their sound or a change in my tastes I don’t know, but I’m finding them to be an awful lot of fun now. Not quite enough to pick up the album or anything, but it’s good stuff.
MP3 Say Hi To Your Mom – Let’s Talk About Spaceships
This is something of an older song, but it’s new to me, hence why it’s here. This is one of the bands where I downloaded some songs simply because I liked the band name and song titles. They turned out to be better than I expected though, and ‘Let’s Talk About Spaceships’ is one of my favourite things that I’ve discovered lately. It has this wonderfully innocent quality about wanting to talk about stupid things instead of slightly more important issues like a relationship that’s collapsing. A lot of their songs seem to have this kind of melancoly feel to them, so they are getting a fair amount of play at the moment. It still amazes me just how many bands that are already well established that I can be completely unaware of. It does make finding new stuff very entertaining though.
Kate Nash doesn’t quite make it to Kent
15 years ago
in Live Reports
I really need to stop writing posts that have Kate Nash in the title, or else I risk sounding like someone slightly obsessed or something. I promise you this is the last one for now though. Anyway, despite the previous post, Kate Nash didn’t actually make it down to Kent to play in the Electric Gardens heats. Which sucks for her, and sucks for me as I didn’t even get to see her play once, let alone at the festival. I did however manage to catch a glimpse of her when she arrived at the Beacon Court Tavern, even if this was unfortunately twenty minutes after the competition had ended. She was hanging around outside for a little bit afterwards too, and I would have gone and spoken to her if I had, you know, a spine.
On a more positive note, I did get to see a fantastic little band called Quadmire, who deserved to win the competition. They performed solidly, had some awesome songs and had a nice, almost 60s like sound, complete with harmonising, giving them a completely different edge to most of the local type bands that I end up seeing. The lead singer was really pleasant too, although I wish I’d taken him up on his offer to write down their website address as I can’t find the bloody thing now. So if anyone can find their Myspace page or whatever, that would be very cool. Edit: Found them at last. The name is Quadmyre, not Quadmire, which explains not being able to find them. Stupid Beacon Court website.
I was also going to do a regular post type thing this evening, but I’m absolutely exhausted, so it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow.
Kate Nash comes to Kent
35 years ago
in MP3s
You’ve all heard my rants about how much of a cultural wasteland it is down here in Kent. Too close to London to get our own shows, too far from London to make travelling there easy. As such, it was kind of nice to discover that one of the artists I’ve written about previously will be playing in a venue pretty close to me.
Kate Nash will be playing at the Beacon Court Tavern in Gillingham this Thursday (28th June, doors 8pm, £2 entry) as part of the heats to get a slot at the Electric Gardens Festival. It’s kind of sad that she has to go through this stage rather than be able to go straight to the festival itself, but there you go. Obviously all of this will be made better if she gets a slot at the festival, but at least there’s this show to look forward to at least.
Now I’ve never been to the Beacon Court Tavern, so I have absolutely no idea what it’s like. I also don’t know if anyone else can go, but I will be resorting to bribery to get others there if it’s required.
The Beacon Court Tavern: Website
MP3 Kate Nash – The Nicest Thing (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash – Dickhead (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash – Caroline’s A Victim (expired)
Apologies for the low quality of the last two songs, but 56kbps is all that’s available.
I’ve talked about ‘The Nicest Thing’ in the past, and I also spoke about not really liking any of her other songs. I’ve been back to them a number of times since then and they have all grown on me to a certain extent. All of these songs sound pretty rough, thanks to both the low bitrate and the bargain basement production, but the songs themselves still shine through. ‘Dickhead’ is a great piano song once you get past the title, and ‘Caroline’s A Victim’ is a dabble into electronica, which doesn’t entirely work, but it’s interesting to say the least.
Below you’ll find a live performance of ‘Birds’ from her show in Brighton a while ago. I’m not usually a fan of embedding Youtube content very much, but this song ranks up there with ‘The Nicest Thing’ for me, and it’s the only way that it seems to be available at the moment. Her facial expressions throughout the song really make the whole thing too.
Kate Nash: Myspace
Kate Nash
215 years ago
in MP3s
I debated for some time whether or not to write about Kate Nash. I read about her over at Skatterbrain, downloaded ‘The Nicest Thing’ and liked it a lot. Naturally I explored more of her music and hit a small problem: If I’m honest, I don’t really like the rest of it. Sure, she has a hell of a lot of talent, but I don’t think she has found what suits her voice just yet. Playing around in multiple genres in a commendable thing, but I didn’t find myself wanting to go back to any of the other songs.
That would usually be where my interest in an artist would collapse. One song wouldn’t be enough to keep me coming back, but in Kate Nash’s case, it is. ‘The Nicest Thing’ is up there with the best new songs that I have heard this year. It’s her most stripped down effort, just a sparse acoustic guitar and her voice, which helps an awful lot. This allows her voice, which manages to be both mournful and grounded at the same time, to become the centrepiece of the song. There is also a wonderful knack for random conversational lyrics here (“I wish that you needed me / I wish that you knew when I said two sugars actually I meant three”).
Granted the production is pretty awful here, with the vocals becoming distorted in the louder parts, but even through that the strength of this song shines through. If it were to be cleaned up a little in a studio, it could be amazing.
MP3 Kate Nash – The Nicest Thing (expired)
Kate Nash: Myspace
