Kate Nash
Made Of Bricks

THE REVIEW

The year was 2007 when a charming and young girl made her debut in the English music scene, offering catchy and unforgettable songs, yet refined and carefully crafted. In the same year, the just-twenty-year-old Kate Nash, who was far from becoming the kind of feminist and furious Cruella De Vil she is today, riding the wave of her good results on the British charts, released this "Made of Bricks," a small brit-pop gem that, six years after its release, remains one of the best pop albums in recent years.

Of course, it is also true that, in today's collapsing mainstream scene, with the likes of Britney Spears and Beyoncé vying for chart dominance, someone might rightly say that standing out from the crowd is easy, but "Made of Bricks" is much more than a basic assignment done just to outperform others: it is an album written and sung with heart and meticulously executed in every detail without, miraculously, seeming overproduced. Listening to it feels like reading the pages of a young woman's diary, with all the moods and colors that can be found there: musically, this translates into a great variety of songs and lyrics, ranging from acoustic ballads ("Birds" and "Nicest Thing") to carefree earworms ("Pumpkin Soup," which surprisingly had decent success even in Italy, and "Shit Song"), also offering more biting moments ("Dickhead"), more melancholic tracks ("Foundations," "Mouthwash"), and descriptions of more or less bizarre characters (the young couple with little money and lots of "ammmore" in the aforementioned "Birds," and the strange girl protagonist of "Mariella"). All of this is tied together by a substantial quest for sound, making the album seem as if it came straight out of the early '80s, while maintaining a recognizable indie identity: a clear example of this are the violins in the already mentioned "Dickhead" or the karaoke-like backing of "Shit Song"; such influences sometimes mix with those of Regina Spektor, resulting in tracks like "We Get On" and "Little Red." However, there is no shortage of more personal and almost experimental insights, such as the increasingly fast and frantic rhythm of "Mariella," or the arrangement crafted around the hammering piano riff of "Mouthwash," and the progressive "piling up" of instruments on top of each other in the short intro "Play." It is all crowned by consistently well-written and sung lyrics, excellently interpreted by a uniquely original, intimate, and personal voice, characterized by a distinct and captivating British accent. The production, clear and able to highlight every single instrument, and the arrangements, meticulously detailed in every track, are also praiseworthy.

In conclusion, what we have in our hands is a well-crafted album, perhaps not perfect and lacking the boldness to propose new musical solutions that could have made it an absolute masterpiece (because, as well-made as it is, it does not bring any real innovation to the musical genre it belongs to), but it certainly deserves to be listened to, if for nothing else but to serve as a pleasant background on these hot summer afternoons.

Note: the rating would be 4.5. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to kindly ask the staff managing the site to introduce the possibility of assigning half-star ratings.