British singer songwriter Nadine Shah wows with sophomore album Fast Food
The first I heard of British singer songwriter Nadine Shah was when Shaun Keavney played her track Fool, on his BBC6 Music breakfast show. That's when I discovered this deeply thrilling artist and her dramatically moody album, Fast Food.
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Shah is cut from the same cloth as contemporaries like Anna Calvi and Florence Welch. Her music has an almost operatic quality to it, it's packed full of drama, class and passion. But unlike Anna Calvi and Florence Welch, Shah kicks arse.
And she pulls no punches with Fool. In its broken stringed guitar and pounding drum, Shah's disdain towards an ex-lover who seduces women with pseudo-intellectual chatter is palpable. That's it. I'm hooked. How refreshing to talk about something so specific, yet completely relatable. She growls that the aforementioned uses Nick Cave as a line to impress. I bring this up because she's been compared to Nick Cave (and PJ Harvey), so I wondered if she was in fact talking about herself and this was an introspective, self-depreciating track.
Stealing Cars in yet another haunting and enigmatic offering. It mentions driving in a car even though neither of them can drive, but it's only in her dreams so no laws have been broken. This recklessness is tainted with melancholy rather than rebellion or carefree romance. The lyrics speak of laying yourself bare, giving yourself entirely to another while living with the inevitable anxiety that this creates and the fear that it's unreciprocated. It's so beautifully dark with it's aggressive, attitude packed guitar riffs.
Nothing Else To Do is painfully brooding and packed full of soul as her rumbling tones declare over and over that 'there's nothing else to do but fall in love'. It's almost like she's giving in to an emotion she doesn't want to be a slave to. This whiskey-soaked track's subtle brass section and sultry guitar is as addictive as love itself. Her husky vocals compliment her poetry perfectly. I can imagine her in smokey Parisian cafe surrounded by polo-necked wearing arty types, hanging on her every word. She intensely stares into the crowd, never raising a smile, let alone attempting to idly converse with a non-communicative audience. Perhaps her song, Fool, is about the people she encounters at her gigs.
She seems to be the thinking man's musician, as her previous album Love To Your Dum And Mad is a dissection of mental health and dedicated to two male friends who took their own lives. That's the beauty of Shah, her songs are so thought-provoking that you can't help but analyse them. Thus perhaps turning you into the person she's talking about in her song, Fool.
Shah is cut from the same cloth as contemporaries like Anna Calvi and Florence Welch. Her music has an almost operatic quality to it, it's packed full of drama, class and passion. But unlike Anna Calvi and Florence Welch, Shah kicks arse.
And she pulls no punches with Fool. In its broken stringed guitar and pounding drum, Shah's disdain towards an ex-lover who seduces women with pseudo-intellectual chatter is palpable. That's it. I'm hooked. How refreshing to talk about something so specific, yet completely relatable. She growls that the aforementioned uses Nick Cave as a line to impress. I bring this up because she's been compared to Nick Cave (and PJ Harvey), so I wondered if she was in fact talking about herself and this was an introspective, self-depreciating track.
Stealing Cars in yet another haunting and enigmatic offering. It mentions driving in a car even though neither of them can drive, but it's only in her dreams so no laws have been broken. This recklessness is tainted with melancholy rather than rebellion or carefree romance. The lyrics speak of laying yourself bare, giving yourself entirely to another while living with the inevitable anxiety that this creates and the fear that it's unreciprocated. It's so beautifully dark with it's aggressive, attitude packed guitar riffs.
Nothing Else To Do is painfully brooding and packed full of soul as her rumbling tones declare over and over that 'there's nothing else to do but fall in love'. It's almost like she's giving in to an emotion she doesn't want to be a slave to. This whiskey-soaked track's subtle brass section and sultry guitar is as addictive as love itself. Her husky vocals compliment her poetry perfectly. I can imagine her in smokey Parisian cafe surrounded by polo-necked wearing arty types, hanging on her every word. She intensely stares into the crowd, never raising a smile, let alone attempting to idly converse with a non-communicative audience. Perhaps her song, Fool, is about the people she encounters at her gigs.
She seems to be the thinking man's musician, as her previous album Love To Your Dum And Mad is a dissection of mental health and dedicated to two male friends who took their own lives. That's the beauty of Shah, her songs are so thought-provoking that you can't help but analyse them. Thus perhaps turning you into the person she's talking about in her song, Fool.
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