Lily Allen was one of Kate Nash's early fans,
which is kind of like Talking Heads stumping for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or
Ian Curtis returning from the dead to sing Interpol's praises. The Dublin-born,
London-based Nash is young, cute, sassy, and armed with story-songs enriched
with catchy pop, but she's improved Allen's formula, most notably by sticking
with one producer—Paul Epworth (Bloc Party, The Rapture)—thus
ending up with a more consistent album. Still, the piano-driven Made Of
Bricks has
plenty of flavors, from peppy overseas hits like the Allen-esque "Foundation"
and the more rock-band-oriented "Mouthwash" (which sports a chorus that sounds
like it could have been written by Bloc Party) to the soulful "Dickhead" and
the thump of "Shit Song." Nash isn't quite the pottymouth that some of those
titles might suggest, and she does a good job of keeping her tales about going
for the wrong guy (among other problems faced by a 20-year-old woman)
relatively universal, even as she's singing about trainers, tarts, and discos.