Tuesday 6 October 2009

Kate Nash 'Pumpkin Soup'

Chart Peak: 23

YouTube

Full disclosure: Kate Nash is my boss's sister's neighbour's daughter.

But that didn't mean I liked 'Caroline's A Victim' or anything. And even when 'Foundations' first showed up, I was a bit unconvinced. It grew on me though, even if you allow for my bias.

One subject we can't avoid though: the voice. Living in Harrow myself, I know there are a lot of people round here who do sound like that, although I've never met anyone who sounds like Roy Stride from Scouting For Girls. Of course, it's a persona she adopts on some tracks and I can see why people dislike it, but I don't really have an objection myself. It's put to good use on the convincingly teenage 'Pumpkin Soup', where the colloquial performance lends the whole thing a sense of intimacy that helps the simple boy-meets-girl-girl-gets-confused story to ring true. It's also one of her strongest tracks musically, with credit due to producer and co-writer Paul Epworth. In places, the Made Of Bricks album suffers from a sense of confusion about which direction it's trying to go in, but in this one case they get it right, with a bubbly and instantly catchy backing track that supports the lyric without overpowering it.

Another of the few tracks from here that made it to my own MP3 player.

Also appearing on: Now 67
Available on: Made of Bricks

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