- Kate Nash with her Supercute! backup dancers
If you’ve listened to the new Kate Nash album, My Best Friend is You, you wouldn’t have been surprised by what you heard last night at Bottom of the Hill. Unfortunately it seemed most of the audience hadn’t. Kate Nash played mostly new songs and while I was looking forward to dancing around with the crowd to those songs, I guess nobody else was. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Earlier in the day Kate Nash played an in-store at Amoeba followed by a CD signing. I was surprised to hear somebody in the audience say they didn’t know she had a new album out and that they were looking forward to hearing some old songs. Hmm…. Well she didn’t play any. What she did do was play some of the key tracks of her new album, and songs like “I Just Love You More” sounded even stronger live then on the album, which just made me excited for that night.
Cut to Bottom of the Hill. Opening the sold out show was Supercute! a band that can only be described by using their own moniker: they were super cute! The band consists of three young girls around 15-years-old, one of which being Rachel Trachtenburg of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. They played in matching outfits with “recycled” candy wrapper headbands (for sale at the merch table, made by the girls) and sang cute songs about hula hooping, not fighting for boys, and a candy city along with covers by Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. For the Hula Hoop Song the girls even brought out hula hoops to use while singing. I took a bit of video just because it was too good to not share.
Following Supercute!, Kate Nash comes on stage dressed all in black with a leather jacket and heavy black eye makeup. I only mention her outfit because it was a big visual cue to what we were about to hear musically. She started the set at her keyboard (featuring a banner in front stating “A Cunt is a Useful Thing”) by playing some of her more dance friendly numbers. Around “Kiss That Grrrl” Kate switched to guitar and the show began to take a different turn, playing some of her more aggressive songs off the new album. She introduced “I’ve Got A Secret” with the preface that “this is a song about homophobia” to which the crowd booed (the correct response, she told us).
For “Foundations” Kate returned to the keyboard and was joined on stage by Supercute! doing backup dancing. After Kate commented “I never want to play that song again without them” I got the feeling she may no longer enjoy playing some of her older songs which would explain the setlist. Returning to the guitar for some more of her riot grrrl inspired tracks from the new album including “Mansion Song” the poem inspired song commenting on the degrading nature of female groupies. Yes this was a show harking back to early 90s feminist Riot Grrrl shows, and I enjoyed it. She concluded the show without an official walk off stage encore but with the punky b-side from her first album “Model Behavior”, a song featuring the lyrics “you don’t have to suck dick to suck seed [succeed]” which having heard it last time she played San Francisco in 2008 should have been an indication to where she was heading to musically. It was a good thing I enjoyed it then and now.
- Thanks to the lucky fan for letting me take a picture of the setlist.
I love the video! I just wish it was longer. They were so adorable.
Too bad I don’t like taking longer videos due to it being too distracting to watch the actual show. But they have some cute videos on their Myspace.
This review is exactly how I explained it to my brother when he asked me how the show went, I was disappointed with the lack of tracks from made of bricks, I think she only played 2 tracks off it.
Did you get a headband?