The Guildhall in Gloucester is one of the best
local intimate venues and it has hosted gigs for
so many bands who were up and coming at the time
who are now well known superstars such as Muse,
Lily Allen, Kate Nash Frank Turner etc and as
Kate Nash is finishing her touring cycle for her
second album ‘My Best Friend Is You’
she decided to do a tour calling at 17 intimate
venues across the country with the Guildhall being
one of them.
When I got to the Guildhall the venue was pretty
busy and moment later the big screen came down
whilst the lights went off and a short documentary
was shown which had Kate Nash talking about her
new project of helping girls getting into music
by going into schools and doing workshops with
the pupils because she realised that statistically
only 13% of people getting royalties for song
writing are female which is quite bad, the video
rolled out for nearly ten minutes and seemed to
of went down well with the crowd who patently
watched the video without making a noise.
 Moments after the video finished Brigitte Aphrodite
took to the stage and to start with I thought
that I was going to hate every moment of them
but from the go they put a smile on my face as
Brigitte herself has a way with words so similar
to Kate Nash in the way that she writes and sings
about anything that comes in her mind but what
makes Brigitte so different from Kate Nash is
the way that she brings comedy into her performance
and cracks jokes and interacts with the crowd
during her songs.
Brigitte and her band were so tight on stage
and they sure knew how to create a noise, during
their 30minutes set they managed to perform 7
songs with ‘Bromley’ being the song
that stood out the most do the comical lyrics
and general nutty on stage performance, overall
just from tonight’s short set I believe
that Brigitte Aphrodite and The Vobs are well
worth keeping an eye on over the next couple of
months as their mix of music and comedy is bound
to pick them up a good following.
 After a 30minute wait Kate Nash took to the stage
and since when I last saw her live things have
changed, I last saw her in 2007 just after she
released her debut album ‘Made Of Bricks’
and she was dressed in a nice flowery dress had
a really bright girly stage set up and had male
backing band members but this time around Kate
Nash fully dressed in black with a black hat which
reminded me of cats, with black hearts drawn on
her cheeks and a big black puffy skirt, her backing
band was an all female line up which totally coincides
with her latest project of helping females get
into music and her stage show was quite basic
with a few lights draped over her keyboard but
then again that’s what you get when playing
an intimate venue with an extremely small stage.
The set opens with Kate strumming her guitar
to ‘I Just Love You More’ and the
moment the first set of spooky screams come in
with a mad flurry of strobe lighting and punk
rock attitude I realise that Kate Nash has grown
into the artist that she wants to be and not the
artist that her record label and the press have
been trying to portray her as for so long now
so say good bye to Kate Nash the pop chick and
say hello to your new favourite riot grrrl.
 The set moved on swiftly with Kate Nash taking
position behind her keyboard to play a double
whammy of singles with ‘Doo-wah-dooh’
and ‘Mouthwash’ being played back
to back which went down extremely well but even
when Kate Nash wasn’t playing her singles
and was playing songs such as ‘I’ve
Got A Secret’, ‘Birds’ etc the
fans still sang along word for word.
Towards the later part of the set Kate Nash announced
that she was going to do some poetry and went
straight into the hard hitting ‘Mansion
Song’ which came across more raw live than
it does on record and the mad flurry of strobe
lighting can be thanked for that as made the whole
moment feel more dramatic.
 The song that got the biggest cheer of the night
was ‘Foundations’ but then that was
to be expected as that is the song that helped
gain Kate Nash the fan base and popularity that
she has worked for over the years.
Throughout the set Kate spent a lot of time talking
to her fans and had a little rant about seeing
Closer magazine at the service station on the
way to gig and seeing a front cover claiming that
Cheryl Cole is fat because some photographer has
caught her on a bad angle despite the fact that
she is one of the skinniest girls in the world,
she also went on to talk about her project to
get more girls involved in music but that got
interrupted by a rude heckler who shouted “play
a fucking song”, this caused Kate to snap
but she dealt with it well and shouted back “Fuck
you for being rude and interrupting when I am
doing an important speech and I will play a fucking
song because I want to play a song and not because
you fucking tell me to play a song alright”,
Kate then finished her speech about schools.
The set finished with ‘Merry Happy’
and everyone left the venue looking extremely
pleased, overall I believe that Kate Nash has
changed for the better her whole new riot grrl
look, feel and sound suits her so well and anyone
who compared her to Lilly Allen when she first
came on the block can go do one as there was no
Lily Allen comparison in sight tonight, instead
we saw a whole new exciting side to Kate Nash
which I hope is here to stay.
Brigitte Aphrodite 4/5
Kate Nash 4/5
Review By Trigger
|
