Kate Nash begins “My Best Friend is You,” her sophomore effort, in the same Hitsville UK territory that defined her debut. But that’s just a point of departure. And oh, what a departure it is!
By the fourth song, “I Just Love You More,” she’s screaming, shivering and cooing against a guitar that sounds borrowed from the Breeders.
“Well, I kind of wanted to mix it a little bit between the pop and the weirder stuff,” says the singer.
She says to achieve this mix, she paid closer attention to the album’s sequence: “I had to work on figuring that out for quite a while,” she says. “Some of it really I thought was kind of funny to do, like after ‘I Just Love You More,’ coming straight with ‘Do-Wah-Doo.’”
Coming back to the friendly Motown neighborhood with songs like “Do-Wah-Doo” will ensure she doesn’t alienate the fans that “Made of Bricks” earned her in 2007. It’s just that she puts these nuggets of primal energy between the catchy and clever material.
And yes, all of the silly, yet vulnerable expressions of jealousy are here as well, delivered in her trademark adorable London accent.
“I bet her feet don’t even stink,” she sings of the subject in “Kiss That Girl.”
“I try not to take myself too seriously, and they are kind of funny,” Nash says of lyrics like that. “It’s not like I find them hilarious, but they are silly little things that you do kind of get pissed off about.”
If that pissed-off feeling is beneath the surface in her poppier numbers, it’s all out on display a few songs later in “Mansion Song,” which begins with a cuss-filled rant that ramps up to a breathless fever by the second minute.
“I was just thinking I wanted to do something like that because I’m interested in other styles as well and want to experiment,” she says.
That’s not the only experimental thing Nash has going for her. She’s been playing with a punk band called the Receeders on the side.
“It’s the first time I’ve really written with other people,” she says, “so it opened me up, maybe made me a little bit more relaxed. And I’m playing bass as well, so I’m thinking differently about how the songs are written.”
Judging by the sheer variety of her “Best Friend,” it’s clear that Nash is thinking differently about a lot of things.
BOSTON
Kate Nash with Supercute!
Tonight, 8 p.m.
Great Scott
1222 Comm. Ave., Allston
SOLD OUT
NEW YORK
Kate Nash with Supercute!
Tonight, 9
The Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St., New York
SOLD OUT
Saturday, 9 p.m.
Music Hall of Williamsburg
66 North 6th St., Brooklyn
SOLD OUT
