KATE NASH

(AU magazine December 2007)

LIVE: Mandela Hall, Belfast

WITH her cute round cheeks and quite astounding head of shaggy auburn hair, Kate Nash totters onstage at the Mandela more TopShop model than real live singing star.
Coming out to the strains of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’, the crowd are instantly receptive to her natural girlish cheeriness.
The stage is set up like Auntie Maud’s front room, decorated with faux flowers and tacky ornaments, but it all adds to Nash’s oddball stage show, as she takes her seat at a piano swathed in red velvet and decorated with a massive bow.
Starting with Mariella - the tale of the girl who glued her lips together - each song is heralded by raucous cheering from the capacity crowd, but Nash’s purely aesthetic appeal is apparent with one glance at the predominantly male audience.
Picking up her guitar for ‘Birds’, she flirts shamelessly, batting her eyelashes before launching into another teen tale of crushes and texts.
Back at the keyboard, Nash is wide-eyed, playing the nursery rhyme-like ‘Mouthwash’, soundtracking an impromptu audience dance contest.
Then the one everyone’s here to hear, ‘Foundations’ – on record a surprisingly emotional song which loses all subtlety in the live forum, but makes for good bopping material.
Nash’s ‘Skins’-era appeal is clearly massive - at just 20, she writes songs called things like ‘Dickhead’ and ‘The Shit Song’ and speaks the same language as The Kids, hence her success.
This, the chart-topper’s second appearance in Belfast this year, is marked by both a definite weight loss and a substantial leap forward in confidence, but the naïve Londoner is still rocking the cutesy angle a little too much for an adult performer.
It’s clear Kate Nash is not just a mini Allen, but will she ever be more than the sum of her Pollyanna parts?