Live in Pink - Kate Nash at EartH 2024
Usually, if I can remember the last time I cried in public it’s because the memory’s still fresh in my mind. So in the interest of hindsight, I’m going to tell you about the gig I’ve just got home from.
First off, a disclaimer: I’m not the most musically minded. I was in a band for less than a year, and only because the singer told me that bass was easy to learn (or at least, “two strings easier than a guitar”). So this won’t be a music review so much as a memoir of a night out in North London.
I meet my brother and some friends in Hackney. They all gig much more often than I do. Paul and Anna met at a gig and are going to an eardrum-splitting 52 shows together this year - not including festivals. I’m going to maybe five, and tonight’s show was a must-see.
You might remember Kate Nash from her hit song Foundations which has been listened to over 140 million times on Spotify alone. Her first album Made of Bricks topped the charts on its release in 2007, which feels like a lifetime ago. More specifically, half a lifetime. Sixteen years ago, I was just turning sixteen; when life was prone to sharp emotions, and appropriate outlets were in short supply. These once-familiar feelings bubble up as a string quintet performs a show-starting overture comprised of Kate Nash’s greatest hits. And by the time she follows up with Mouthwash - a personal favourite from her first album - I am drowning in nostalgia.
Despite the joy that comes from the sheer physicality of live music, if it only amounts to a Spotify playlist with better production values I tend to end the night wondering whether I should’ve stayed at home. But this won’t turn out to be one of those gigs. Given that the EartH in Hackney can fit a maximum of 700 attendees (presumably reached since the show has sold out) it’s impressive that it manages to feel so intimate. Its sloping, amphitheatre-like design means that my vision isn’t underlined by a thicket of bobbing heads, and so I don’t feel lost in a sea of people. But, more realistically perhaps, it’s my personal history with the music that elevates tonight’s show.
The tempo turns down for Nicest Thing (another classic from the archive), and I find myself ruminating on what it meant to be sixteen: a lot of watching music videos on freeview channels. Like perhaps not few enough people I grew up in a confusing household - where having needs was problematic, individuality was ignored and vulnerability scolded. And, so perhaps predictably, I tended to shut myself away from the world. Music TV became a lifeline: it gave me a way to relate to people, got me into a band, and something to bond over with my first girlfriend.
At sixteen I used to go to Wimbledon Common on Friday and Saturday nights where I was the quietest in the group until I had a couple of beers (bought by an older friend), and then I quickly became the loudest. I wanted to talk to everyone about anything and everything, and what I found was that they were the same - I wasn’t the freak I thought I was, or at the very least I’d managed to find a crew of freaks like me. It was then that I fell in love with a girl we’ll pretend is nameless. One night, as we lay in the dirt and pine needles, staring up at the stars over South London, we discovered that we shared a love of Kate Nash. She told me about a fanimation video of Nicest Thing on YouTube, and how its quirky and hand-drawn style made it feel so much more personal than anything on MTV. I’d seen it too. Both of us assumed we were alone in having found this bizarre little nugget that affected us so deeply.
But our romance was short-lived (as love stories so often are), and I discovered what it meant to be ghosted before I had a word for it. It’s been over a decade since we saw each other, but mutual friends tell me that she has a family now. I wonder… if she were here tonight, hearing this song again, what memories it might unlock? Would she think of me on hearing these chords that were once so familiar to us both that we would hum them as naturally as breathe?
The feeling of a tear pushing its way out (no matter how much you fight to keep it in) is not unlike the moment before you vomit. From somewhere deep inside, something is dredged up, dragging with it a reminder that there is more to you than the part presented to polite society. But despite this unpleasantness, I am so so thankful to have a moment in tonight’s show that is small and quiet when I feel small and quiet. It’s fun to feel lost in the crowd as you all scream along to an upbeat chart-topper, but there’s nothing like hearing a song that isn’t afraid to sit with you in a lonesome place.
To be clear, I don’t think a single tear counts as crying in public - that comes later.
When I finish daydreaming there’s a stillness in the room. Kate’s stood centre stage, hands behind her back, staring into the crowd. There’s something electric in the air; we’re in uncharted waters, and nobody knows what comes next. I stand there, staring back at her, wondering what she’s waiting for. A nervous “whoop!” from behind me and the spell is broken. I smile, and she smiles too. My brother whispers in my ear, “I think she’s looking at you.”
Kate Nash is very good at making the crowd feel seen. She’ll single people out to sing directly at, sometimes crouching as she performs to the pit in front of the stage with cameras inches from her mic.
The show opened with a skit in which Kate’s running late, only to be held up at the doors by a jobsworthy security guard who doesn’t see her name on the list (“Course it’s not on the guest list - I got top billin’, mate”). This is the show. It’s acknowledging that we, everyone in the room - and not just the audience - have come together for a good time. The skit ends with Nash walking on stage out of a French window through smoke and lights, and into a temporary garden with an evergreen lawn and oversized glittering flowers. She’s wearing an outfit not unlike the one in her latest music video (Millions of Heartbeats, the first single from her newest album). And compared to the usual fare of a band walking onstage, it feels as if we’re invited into a secret, mystical space. The reality might be no different to any other gig, but it feels different - it’s a full-on performance.
The reality of the level of effort she puts into the show is obvious. Kate seems to lap the full width of the stage at least twice per song, making full use of its depth, and I have no doubt that she would use the airspace too if only she could fly. The stage is peppered with teas, water bottles and more. And by the end of the first song she necks four of them back-to-back. She’s drenched in sweat. At first, she plays it for laughs as she mimes recoiling at the smell from her armpits, but she’s also coming in late on her lines as she catches her breath. It’s a little rough around the edges.
Back when we were queueing for the gig, I’d told my brother I was worried that this being my first Kate Nash gig, tonight might shatter the illusion built up over half a lifetime’s listening to her studio-manicured music. I’m not the first to have idolised a musician, and I’ve left other gigs saddened at the realisation that I’ve just taken another act off their pedestals.
All of which is to say I knew this night might not have lived up to sixteen years of hype. A reasonable fear.
But Kate’s presence on stage, the joy she exudes, and her obvious love for music, breathes life into the show. It’s one thing to know someone’s out there making the music you love, but to see it - to be in the room with that person - is to be confronted with the fact that here's a fully real, three-dimensional human who you once treated as just an idea. Is there a word for that?
She sings another track from her newest album: Space Odyssey 2001. In it she name-drops a friend who’s in the crowd tonight, and after the song points out the album’s producer (he’s the last person still in the reserved seats). And she makes a big deal about the crowd in the stageside pit to make room for her mother.
The cumulative effect of all of this is that her music feels more personal than ever.
Even so, it’s the pop-ier tracks that make the crowd go wild.
Although the show started with the crowd firmly placed in the upward-sloping stands, it’s perhaps no surprise that people have since surged to the front.
And, yes, the crowd does at times feel like a bit much for me. It’s Friday night, and I might be the only one in the room not drinking. A scuffle breaks out behind me, two lads squaring off, resulting in the better part of a pint being spilt over the sound technicians. People are starting to whoop less and instead scream “We love you, Kate!” between songs. I hear the couple in front of me sing along to My Little Alien with equal passion as they both misremember the same line and then giggle and kiss.
As expected, the night ends on Foundations. And, as expected, the crowd goes ballistic. Including me. I sing with the sorrow and the joy and the boredom and the heartache and the alienation (and more) that was present in every moment of every time I’ve ever sung along before. And as I revel in the feeling of being one with the crowd (doing my best to match the volume of the girl gang behind me who are singing with a ferocity usually reserved for Mr. Brightside at the end of a late noughties club night), I realise that once again I’ve found my freaks.
There’s no way of knowing what tonight’s music means to everyone in the room. An infinite number of memories and associations pouring out around me as we all do our best to honour ourselves by singing our hearts out. For all the lone tears and more that were sniffed back around me, there’s someone’s late-night crying session with the same track playing over and over and never getting old; there’s a pensive bus ride staring out the window trying to unravel a knot in your stomach; there’s an impromptu karaoke session in a bar, on a bus, in a park, in a bedroom; there’s a young person discovering for the first time how their heart flutters when they feel compelled to the company of a near stranger, and the rediscovery of that same feeling for what might be the millionth time.
And so I too belt out the chorus till my voice cracks, and I feel a moment of gratitude for having come out tonight, for celebrating my passion for everything life has to offer, and for having fallen in love with this music. And at that moment, a moment where I feel so happy after what felt like a tour through some of my least memories, when I least expect it: the floodgates open. And the tears don’t sting, because I’m not choking them back, they flow freely and I don’t give a shit.
Outside, after the gig, Anna tells me she’s embarrassed that she got a bit emotional during the show. And so one of two things is true here: either she has no idea we shared a very similar moment separately, or she’s very politely trying to make me feel better for getting a little publicly weepy. Little does she know I only wish more in life mattered to me like tonight did.
Kate Nash’s newest album is out now - right now; the day I’m posting this. Not being paid to tell you, just thought it was worth pointing out.