Kath Nash | Connie Constance
New Century, Manchester
26th November 2024
Despite her low profile in the press and Social Media recently, Kate Nash is promoting a new album 9 Sad Symphonies and is currently on a UK tour performing her wordy pop alongside her band and including the occasional monologue. MK Bennett sings along.
In the great twenty-first-century tombola of debate, where future historians discovered that your opinion was given to you by a stranger versed in RightSpeak, regardless of your own opinion, and the great scrolls and creeds handed down by generations became mere rolling papers for the middle classes, with all the accumulated knowledge and lived experience of three badly spelt Social Media posts, there stood a shining beacon of pop hope. And her arse.
Kate Nash, despite her recent palaver, is a pop star and one with longevity too, as Foundations came out an astonishing 17 years ago, a time when an Estuary accent and an upbeat tune would get you on the red carpet at the Brits, but not for very long. Pop must evolve to remain mercurial and fleeting, as if that quicksilver haste makes it alluring in the first place like the magician constantly surprised by the disappearing rabbit.
The dreaded-up rapscallion and mini whirlwind Connie Constance is up first in the pleasantly warm and already nicely full New Century, a ball of energy to get the crowd moving and involved, an early call to arms with her excellent modern pop, moving like a dervish about the stage, upbeat and designed for the dance, she is a fantastic foil to her touring partner, a lightness of touch to leave you smiling.
Kate Nash has a show, as she may have mentioned in other media recently. At seventeen years deep and still playing to full halls, she knows what she’s about, she understands her crowd with that unique knowledge that comes with growing up, culturally and musically, with your fans as your peers. Throughout the big introduction, as the band takes the stage, the delayed gratification as she wanders on stage leaves an eventual explosion of love because she is on tour and among friends, supported by everyone here.
Her music and words are well loved by those who relate to them, especially the early material, the highly diaristic stuff, which, though it runs the risk of being seen as out of date, actually comes across now as a classic genre pop, storytime pop, as with any narrative music, it sits in time as a reminder. Millions Of Heartbeats is a good example of her ability to relate, as the whole crowd sing along to “Everything hurts, yeah it hurts so much, I eat my dinner in the toilets at lunch”. It is a song about looking for something you cannot name, an itch you cannot reach. The piano intro alone gave the front row palpitations, how does she follow this?
She follows this with one of the more eccentric but brilliant set lists, at least in terms of flow, part punk fury, part musical hall happy; there’s a surprise at every turn, and the audience is with her all the way. Vampyre is also from her new album, 9 Sad Symphonies, an acoustic song that seems to be about letting yourself be happy, a brilliant lyric mixing the literal with the poetic, Kate’s sweet spot. Mouthwash, from the ever-popular Made Of Bricks next, greeted like an old friend from out of town.
Misery is next, a different form from its album version, but still magnificent, a downbeat tune with an upbeat middle eight, a song of support, which is apt before the first monologue of the evening. Emotional understandably, funny too because humour will always be our very last port, it is the British way. Cancer wards are full of phenomenal comedians who can no longer stand up, and you know things have hit her deeply, but you carry on, you carry on.
There are medleys and more monologues before the incredibly titled I Hate Seagulls, a set highlight originally from 2010, a list as a metaphor for turning the hate inward and finding salvation elsewhere. It is both a lament and a celebration, and it is quite wonderful. A Word for the Girl Talk album from 2013, a brisk and bass-led outlier, some of which was played tonight, It is occasionally pop but more often a sort of Riot Grrrl Lite, a post-punk album of excellence ( Death Proof, Cherry Pickin, Part Heart, all still in the set) this was a huge risk for a pop diva, but unless Lily Allen enlarges the already natural connection between the two and records a lo-fi collection of Bikini Kill covers, this will remain an extraordinary stand out in her discography.
Ray seems like a touchstone for Kate, starting acoustically and reminiscent of Nirvana’s third album rather than second, it’s a heartbreaking thing with a beautiful denouement, another minor to major key victory, hopefully, because the sun shines somewhere, out there. Wasteman is a much-needed moment of light after the dark, the calm after the storm, an unfortunately familiar tale of masculinity gone wrong, again. It happily turns into a pop banger, too, the music maybe reflecting the decisions made.
My Little Alien is a near nursery rhyme/folk song of joy with a fantastic hook, a popular choice with the audience, which is true of the entire set, honestly. Foundations is, inevitably, the last song of the set proper, and it sounds as perfect a pop song now as it did in 2007, instantly recognisable from the keyboard intro, as the audience went batshit crazy for this homecoming queen of a number. Birds is another of Kate’s narratives, Paris Texas in a Margate car park, a short love story for the ages, high in audience participation and the perfect song to finish on, to leave them smiling. The archetypal Kate Nash song and one of the dozens of reasons she is so well loved. One of the humble us but also apart.
Kate Nash has nearly a million followers on the green circle (Spotify) streaming App. One million, and it doesn’t pay for a string section in an English city. Remake, remodel.
Please note: Use of these images in any form without permission is illegal. If you wish to contact the photographer please email: mel@mudkissphotography.co.uk
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Kate Nash links website | Facebook |Twitter and Instagram.
All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
All photos by Melanie Smith – Louder Than War | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Portfolio
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