St. Patrick’s Day is a big party holiday. Just take one good look in any bar and you’ll likely see it packed with people drinking green beer. Call it tradition or whatever else you want, so long as there’s an excuse to have kegs and eggs at eight in the morning. This year the holiday fell on a Sunday, which with most people having work the next morning, might make you think things would be calmer. Not so much the case, from my experience. The reason I bring it up is because many probably woke up with a severe hangover on Monday morning, which led to a long day of vowing to never drink again. That wasn’t my Monday, but for many of my friends it was. It’s telling that none of them were available to attend an evening of girls with guitars on Monday night at the Empty Bottle. The two bands on the bill were Supercute! and Kate Nash, a show that had been sold out for months in advance. Before the show, I found myself asking, “Is Kate Nash really that popular?” because honestly I know very few people that might consider themselves fans of hers, and those that are tend to reference her debut Made of Bricks more than anything else. She came out of the stew of Myspace discovered artists back in the mid-00s and sort of followed in Lily Allen’s footsteps but as more of a second or third fiddle to her “fuck you” pop star act. Yet here we are in 2013, and Allen is all but a faded memory having retired from music a couple years back. Meanwhile Nash presses onward and carves her own unique path and apparently a die hard fan base with it. I’ve liked all her records, but also tend to forget about them after six months. I went to the show for a couple reasons: 1) Nash has a new record out called Girl Talk that’s pretty good. 2) I’ve never seen her perform live before, and that’s something I’ve been meaning to do. 3) Supercute! was opening for her, and I was particularly interested in hearing what they would have to offer.
So let’s start with Supercute!, because they were first up for the evening. If you’ve never heard of Supercute! before, they’re an all-teen, all-girl four piece band from NYC. Their ages range from as young as 13 to as old as 19. The band was started in 2009 by Rachel Trachtenburg (who played drums as a member of The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players starting at age six) and her friend Julia Cumming. They wrote some goofy songs about candy and boys and such together using ukuleles and keyboards, which then led to performances and studio recordings. They’ve only expanded from there, adding new members and releasing singles and building a fan base show by show. Kate Nash has been a Trachtenburg family friend for several years, and she’s really taken Supercute! under her wing and done most of her touring with them in recent years. Nash also produced their debut album DON’T PoP MY BUBBLE, which will officially be released on June 11th. In their short 20 minute set, they mostly stuck to new material, though some of what qualifies as “new” they’ve been playing live for quite awhile now. Still, even the songs they’ve been performing for years got some new life injected into them thanks to their beefed up and more aggressive approach. The ukuleles and keyboards are still present, but play much less of a prominent role thanks to the addition of bass and electric guitars. Their songs, while often lighthearted and goofy, were also thrown a little off-kilter into a darker and more psychedelic territory. It’s fascinating because the girls have on these colorful outfits and makeup, and you’ll wind up with their songs in your head, but your brain is equal parts impressed and scared. While they’re clearly very talented and have a big future ahead of them, there’s also a weird sense of concern that maybe they’re growing up a little too fast. You could say they’re almost a modern-day version of The Runaways, though not as brash or sexualized. Their live show is solid, but also needs a little bit of fine tuning that will work itself out the more they tour. I may not be anywhere near the teenage girl demographic that Supercute! are aiming their music towards, but I still enjoyed and appreciated their set. Others in the 21+ crowd did as well, as I overheard a guy behind me say to his friend in near disbelief, “They were really good.” So chalk up another ringing endorsement for this band, they’re one to keep an eye on.
Watch the video for the new Supercute! single “Love Love Leave Love” off their forthcoming album
Buy Supercute! music on Bandcamp
Check out the Supercute! website
Oh, what can I say about Kate Nash? She’s an absolute delight, and it’s easy to understand why her fans are so devoted to her. Devoted to the point where they crowd funded her new album Girl Talk after she fell from the graces of a major label record deal for wanting to take a different direction with her sound. It’s eerily similar to what Amanda Palmer pulled off a few months earlier, though Nash didn’t get a million dollars in donations like Palmer did. In the end it really doesn’t matter how much money you make, so long as you make enough to keep doing what you want to do. And now the completely liberated Nash wants to play the bass and prove she can rock just as hard as any guy. To me, such an evolution was inevitable for her and I had no doubt she could pull it off, but apparently her label was looking for the next Regina Spektor instead of the next Courtney Love. Okay so she’s not a hot mess with more drugs and alcohol in her veins than blood, but she does have a similar vocal range to pull off syrupy sweet one moment and a rage-filled wail the next. That balance of dark and light is all over her new album, and in essence bled into her live show as well. She started with “Sister” and its deep bass line, which eventually turns into a raucous punk rock groove complete with some guttural vocal acrobatics. That sort of visceral and cutting anger boiled to the surface more than a few times throughout the show, in particular on songs like “I Just Love You More,” the old b-side “Model Behaviour” and her cover of FIDLAR’s “Cocaine,” which she retitled “Grrrl Gang.” Much of it was rather “riot grrrl” in nature, with Nash and her all-female backing band really making the most of their talents by taking even the poppiest songs and dirtying them up a bit. “Foundations” is the song that brought her to the attention to a lot of people in ’06-’07, and while she’s basically obligated to perform it at all her shows from here to eternity, she by no means has to keep it in the same bubblegum piano pop arena of the recorded version. The guitars don’t exactly transform the song into something entirely different, they just bring some additional forcefulness and speed that strips some of the charm but allows the lyrics to take more precedence, which is kind of nice.
Obviously a fair amount of the set list was populated with Girl Talk tracks as that’s what this tour is supporting, but everything else was a great mixture of older material, rarities and covers. Her take on “My Chinchilla,” a song by early ’90s Canadian indie pop girl band Cub (which counted Neko Case as a member for a brief period) felt like it was made for her to sing, as is blended so effortlessly with her charming and witty personality. Her between song banter was one of the show’s greatest highlights, and made all the more amusing by members of the crowd yelling things at her. “I just really want to touch you!” a girl at the front of the stage yelled. Nash thought for a moment, then wandered over to her and extended her arm, which the girl touched for a brief moment. “It’s been awhile [since somebody touched me],” Nash said with a wink after it happened. A couple songs later, someone (apparently a man) threw a bra on stage. “Oh wow, thank you,” Nash said sarcastically before following up with, “By the way, what kind of man brings a bra with him to throw on stage?” That’s the sort of vibe you get from people late on a Monday night after St. Patrick’s Day I guess. When she wasn’t busy interacting with the crowd, she also told funny stories like the time she accidentally knocked out one of her front teeth. But one of the things that really struck me was how she also took a few moments to talk about the charity she’s working with called Because I am a Girl. It’s a campaign designed to protect and empower women in developing countries and provide them opportunities they might not normally have to achieve their dreams. I am not a woman nor do I live in a developing country, but I admire the cause and hope you’ll consider donating. Hopefully you’ll also consider donating to the well-being of Kate Nash’s career by buying her new record or going to see a show. While I’ve always liked her music, I’ve never been as passionate about it as I have been with other artists. Now that I’ve seen her perform, I walked away an even bigger fan than I was going in. It’s always a great show when something like that happens.
Kate Nash – Death Proof (CSS Remix)
Watch the video for “Under-estimate the Girl”
Watch the video for “Death Proof”
Buy Girl Talk from Amazon
See the set list and tour dates after the jump!
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