Kate Nash is a BRIT Award-winning singer-songwriter, musician and actress known for her fearless approach to music and unapologetic storytelling. With a career spanning over a decade, she has garnered critical acclaim for her chart-topping hits and electrifying live performances.
Nearly twenty years into her ever-evolving career, London and LA-based, Brit award-winning singer, songwriter, actor and activist Kate Nash has seen it all. She’s achieved huge commercial success – 2007’s debut Made of Bricks, featuring the hit single “Foundations”, reached number 1 in the UK and spent seven months in the top 40 – seen the darker side of the industry after being dropped in 2012 following 2010’s Bernard Butler-assisted My Best Friend Is You, forged her own path as a successful independent artist via 2013’s punk-y Girl Talk and 2018’s Yesterday Was Forever, and starred in HBO’s hit wrestling drama, GLOW.
She’s also been the subject of an award-winning documentary, Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl, and also co-created a musical, Only Gold, with Hamilton choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler. Oh, and she also starred in that too. Still only 36, Nash isn’t finished shape-shifting just yet; after signing with legendary label Kill Rock Stars, whose alumni include Nash favourites Elliott Smith and Sleater-Kinney, in early 2024, she’ll release her fifth album, 9 Sad Symphonies, in June.
Inspired by old Hollywood, vintage musicals and a desperate quest to find beauty in a rotten world, it’s another sonic shift following her “rage-y” recent output. “It needed to be cinematic and dreamy,” Nash says of the 10-track album (the title is both a joke and an ode to passing achievable goals when creativity crumbles). As for the sonic shifts, it’s just second nature: “I do things based on what I’m feeling at the time, and what I’m inspired by,” she explains. That moment of the album’s creation was fuelled by two things; her work on Only Gold and a global pandemic that curtailed filming on the fourth season of GLOW and sent Nash – and everyone – into a tailspin. After a period of lying in bed watching zombie movies, creativity started to arrive in the autumn and winter of 2020, with songs being worked on well into 2021.
While the album was finished at the end of 2021, Nash wasn’t sure what to do with it. Free from the typical record industry framework – no manager, no label, no booking agents – she did two things: went on tour in 2022, which was rejuvenating, and joined TikTok. Her first post was a timeline of her extraordinary career, which ended with her questioning the best way in which to release the new album (some of the songs, including “Misery”, “Wasteman”, and “Horsie”, had already started to emerge without a label).
That first post went viral, leading to an influx of offers from labels and managers, creating a scenario Nash had been in before, dealing with some of the industry’s shadier characters. One label, however, had been interested for a while. “Kill Rock Stars had been pursuing me for two years. They had been checking in for a while saying “we notice the album hasn’t come out, we really love it’.” Once Nash had secured an excellent new manager, the loose ends were tied up and the album was ready to go.
KATE NASH
LIMELIGHT BELFAST
17TH DECEMBER 2024
KATENASH.COM
TICKETS ON SALE WEDNESDAY AT 10 AM VIA TICKETMASTER.IE
New album 9 Sad Symphonies
Out Now Via Kill Rock Stars
Be the first to comment