So, Kate Nash. Well this was a popular evening, and proof that Kate already has a collective of steadfast fans; the place was packed with people even if had been advertised to start a whole hour later on her myspace.
All ticket holders wanted to be there for this, and a jolly, youthful and musical affair it was too. Kate, more Nash-‘ville’ than bashful in her Americana ‘Dorothy’ frock had me impressed because she was in complete command of her entire performance.
This girl has only been doing the music business thing for a year or so and already she was interceding her repertoire of songs with little impromptu conversations with the audience about this and that; meetings at Capital Radio, a mate she sees in the audience, oh yeah, being on Jools Holland a few days before. 
For most of us, just standing up in front of a huge room of people at 19 years of age would be a pretty alarming feat. Add singing about 10 songs into that equation, while all the while strumming at a guitar, or playing the keyboard and still finding the time to make yourself a performer rather than a performance; well I’d call all that rather impressive if you ask me. 
I don’t need to bang on about influences and where the origins of her musical style are from in this review… she’s hasn’t been on the planet enough time to hear and be influenced by too many things. If she is anything like most teenagers, she will have been inadvertently influenced by all genres of pop music being played around her, and yes, there are similarities between her and The Streets, Lily Allen and other colloquial singer songwriters of today. Her music is conversational in style and simplistic in its use of chords and rhythms, but it cannot be doubted that this is original stuff and she gets several brownie points for doing all the writing herself. She’s not singing about something some miscellaneous music producer has thought out as they try to recapture their youth in a song with a good commercial, I mean, catchy melody. This is Kate singing about the everyday array of her life, made all the more pronounced in her ability to make her notation mirror the lyrics and vice-versa. For example, a bored sigh about an annoying boyfriend will fill purposefully a rest in a bar of music.
This is clever and often very funny, drawing you into the music. You can relate to this stuff, well you definitely can if you are around her age, when this is all stuff happening to you too. I can report the audience around me agreed; the two girls standing next to me were happily singing along with her, word for word, even when if truth be known, I’m not sure this was intended. I think the little dogs and elephants posing under umbrellas were also probably seen as sweet by the young ones..
and the two other band members were also young (and startled?!)
making the whole show an optimum experience for the mainly teenage fans. Check out her myspace for details on forthcoming events... www.myspace.com/katenashmusic
Whatever her age, I'd like you to think of Kate as original, confident and talented, and may she continue to be so in the future. I’m looking forward to seeing whether her music will gain a little more complexity in content and musicianship, but may she enjoy this first album release as is. It is all too easy in this new world of mass communication to get caught up in the who’s who of everything, the industry madness of gossip and comparisons, no better illustrated than in the song ‘LDN is a victim’ (check out myspace to hear it) from an anonymous writer, (perhaps Just Jack?) mocking various kids who are making up the scene these days including Lily Allen, Jack Penate, Adele and of course Kate whose song Caroline’s A Victim is where this satirical tune got it’s name. Believe me, I will be the first to debate and mock an overindulgent not so indie ‘scene’, (see Crystal Vision entry if you please) producing empty music from moneyed people who are simply the ones with the time to do it, but, put simply you can’t always put people, music, covers, genres, styles, London itself in groups. And if I’m looking at Kate Nash as an individual who broke her leg, had a few months to write some tunes in her bedroom as a result, had the common nougat to stick those tunes on myspace and get down to her local bar to sing a few of them afterwards, well I say bravo. Sorry. (Or not).
Ok quickly now (as I’ve since been to the ICA again to see CAPTAIN, review coming after this!!) before Kate Nash we had To My Boy. Much of what these two boys were about (too old for toys clearly) is portrayed beautifully in this picture,
What are they yelling about this Sam White
and Jack Snape? 
Well, actually their lyrics are actually rather interesting, and present an overall effect of meaning differing greatly to the cutesy if somewhat overt rhyming of our headliner. But while it’s a new age thing they are doing, you really can hear every word – top annunciation from these lads of Chesterfield and Liverpool, good good. But you don’t really worry about the words or meaning for too long, it’s the sound that really matters to these two and I quickly found myself bobbing my head up and down in time to their punchy beats. They describe themselves as futurist pop made with guitar and computer with.. ‘utopian visions!’, or an even better description of their musical intent, ‘down with miserable retroism. Hurray for the beautiful machine’. I like it. They are definitely thinking outside of the box and are more than competent musically to express themselves with serious integrity and maximum energy. As with all the coolest bands to pass through the ICA they were giving away multi-coloured badges and stickers as well. We like that. Check out their myspace http://www.myspace.com/tomyboyaktion
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