Kate Nash/ My Best Friend Is You

Kate Nash
My Best Friend Is You
(Fiction)

We know you all think that being a music journalist is the holy grail of jobs: different gigs every night; meeting bands; cocaine out of strippers’ navels - all that nonsense. And it is like that. (Except that whole thing about strippers and cocaine – we can’t afford either and we’re pretty sure they’re both bad for you).
But every now and then you have to take one for the team and review something that you know you’d never willingly touch with a bargepole of any length. Ladies and gentlepersons, we present Exhibit A: My Best Friend Is You.
The fundamental problem with this album is that it feels like Kate Nash had written and recorded half of it, only for someone in a smart suit to enter into the studio and say “we want you to do something a bit ‘edgier’” – without ever actually specifying what that meant.
Consequently, this album contains a number of musical misfits including forced attempts at punk, jangly indie-pop, doo-wop and some disturbing free-form poetry that we’re sure was supposed be meaningful, but ends up feeling a bit embarrassing.
The real shame in all this is that Nash herself probably deserves better. Tracks like ‘Early Christmas Present’, regardless of your genre orientation, show that she still has the talent to write a solid pop song. It’s just a shame for that, for the bulk of this LP, this wasn’t allowed to shine through.