Kate Nash is back and means business with her third album. The River went and caught up with the indie singer.
James Garwood
A confident Kate Nash proudly says she hasn’t held back on her new record at all.
Why should she? Nash had a year from hell in 2012, her relationship with The Cribs guitarist, Ryan Jarman ended and the death of a close friend created the backstory to her most honest work yet.
“I was in a bad place; I’d been treated very badly. And I needed to write to survive that experience,” she explains.
It was 2007 when Foundations first infected the radio stations. Its writer, 19-year-old Kate Nash, became a household name with her girl-next-door music style and tongue in cheek lyrics.
In 2010, she returned with the album My Best Friend is You, bringing a slightly naughtier side to her songwriting. Now, at 25, she’s back again with the new album Girl Talk.
Her feminist roots and love of girl power have also played their part in the making of her album, with Nash saying she feels like girls need each other with guys on their team too.
“There’s too much sexism and misogyny and this album is about getting through experiencing that. I was undermined,” she explains. “I feel very feminine and that being a girl is important to me.
“I think we are entitled to express the spectrum of human emotion but a lot of the time society can’t handle it when a woman is honest about herself because it’s intimidating.”
When asked about her relationship with music, Nash says: “Music is my therapy and this album is for all my friends and fans and I want it to be a support for them and to empower them. I am on their side.” Her inspirations for her songwriting have become clear to her. “If I am exploding with desire or pain, otherwise I won’t really write about it.”
Rising up around the social networking world she’s learnt a lot about herself. “I’ve learnt that my instincts are usually right even though it might take me a while to act on them,” she explains. Perhaps coyly referring to the tough year she’s just made it through, she adds: “I trust people too easily.”
A fan of a crazy night and crazy adventure Nash explained the weirdest night she’s ever had. “Some pretty weird stuff went down in Vegas| she says. We rocked up at midnight and I made a lot of interesting friends and won five bucks. We drank cheap liquor until 9am and I think at around three I rode a motorbike and the actor I was hanging out with, who shall remain nameless, stripped down to his birthday suit.”
With that, we can only imagine what the girl talk would be like.
Kate Nash’s single 3am is out now. The album Girl Talk is out March 4.