Gig Review

Kate Nash
Brigitte Aphrodite
Gloucester, Guildhall
3rd April 2011

                                                                                               
Kate Nash              Brigitte Aphrodite         
                     
Photo Of Brigitte Aphrodite © Copyright Trigger The Guildhall in Gloucester is one of the best local intimate venues and it has hosted gigs for so many bands who were up and coming at the time who are now well known superstars such as Muse, Lily Allen, Kate Nash Frank Turner etc and as Kate Nash is finishing her touring cycle for her second album ‘My Best Friend Is You’ she decided to do a tour calling at 17 intimate venues across the country with the Guildhall being one of them.

When I got to the Guildhall the venue was pretty busy and moment later the big screen came down whilst the lights went off and a short documentary was shown which had Kate Nash talking about her new project of helping girls getting into music by going into schools and doing workshops with the pupils because she realised that statistically only 13% of people getting royalties for song writing are female which is quite bad, the video rolled out for nearly ten minutes and seemed to of went down well with the crowd who patently watched the video without making a noise.

Photo Of Brigitte Aphrodite © Copyright TriggerMoments after the video finished Brigitte Aphrodite took to the stage and to start with I thought that I was going to hate every moment of them but from the go they put a smile on my face as Brigitte herself has a way with words so similar to Kate Nash in the way that she writes and sings about anything that comes in her mind but what makes Brigitte so different from Kate Nash is the way that she brings comedy into her performance and cracks jokes and interacts with the crowd during her songs.

Brigitte and her band were so tight on stage and they sure knew how to create a noise, during their 30minutes set they managed to perform 7 songs with ‘Bromley’ being the song that stood out the most do the comical lyrics and general nutty on stage performance, overall just from tonight’s short set I believe that Brigitte Aphrodite and The Vobs are well worth keeping an eye on over the next couple of months as their mix of music and comedy is bound to pick them up a good following.

Photo Of Kate Nash © Copyright TriggerAfter a 30minute wait Kate Nash took to the stage and since when I last saw her live things have changed, I last saw her in 2007 just after she released her debut album ‘Made Of Bricks’ and she was dressed in a nice flowery dress had a really bright girly stage set up and had male backing band members but this time around Kate Nash fully dressed in black with a black hat which reminded me of cats, with black hearts drawn on her cheeks and a big black puffy skirt, her backing band was an all female line up which totally coincides with her latest project of helping females get into music and her stage show was quite basic with a few lights draped over her keyboard but then again that’s what you get when playing an intimate venue with an extremely small stage.

The set opens with Kate strumming her guitar to ‘I Just Love You More’ and the moment the first set of spooky screams come in with a mad flurry of strobe lighting and punk rock attitude I realise that Kate Nash has grown into the artist that she wants to be and not the artist that her record label and the press have been trying to portray her as for so long now so say good bye to Kate Nash the pop chick and say hello to your new favourite riot grrrl.

Photo Of Kate Nash © Copyright TriggerThe set moved on swiftly with Kate Nash taking position behind her keyboard to play a double whammy of singles with ‘Doo-wah-dooh’ and ‘Mouthwash’ being played back to back which went down extremely well but even when Kate Nash wasn’t playing her singles and was playing songs such as ‘I’ve Got A Secret’, ‘Birds’ etc the fans still sang along word for word.

Towards the later part of the set Kate Nash announced that she was going to do some poetry and went straight into the hard hitting ‘Mansion Song’ which came across more raw live than it does on record and the mad flurry of strobe lighting can be thanked for that as made the whole moment feel more dramatic.

Photo Of Kate Nash © Copyright TriggerThe song that got the biggest cheer of the night was ‘Foundations’ but then that was to be expected as that is the song that helped gain Kate Nash the fan base and popularity that she has worked for over the years.

Throughout the set Kate spent a lot of time talking to her fans and had a little rant about seeing Closer magazine at the service station on the way to gig and seeing a front cover claiming that Cheryl Cole is fat because some photographer has caught her on a bad angle despite the fact that she is one of the skinniest girls in the world, she also went on to talk about her project to get more girls involved in music but that got interrupted by a rude heckler who shouted “play a fucking song”, this caused Kate to snap but she dealt with it well and shouted back “Fuck you for being rude and interrupting when I am doing an important speech and I will play a fucking song because I want to play a song and not because you fucking tell me to play a song alright”, Kate then finished her speech about schools.

The set finished with ‘Merry Happy’ and everyone left the venue looking extremely pleased, overall I believe that Kate Nash has changed for the better her whole new riot grrl look, feel and sound suits her so well and anyone who compared her to Lilly Allen when she first came on the block can go do one as there was no Lily Allen comparison in sight tonight, instead we saw a whole new exciting side to Kate Nash which I hope is here to stay.

Brigitte Aphrodite 4/5
Kate Nash 4/5

Review By Trigger

 Kate Nash


Kate Nash

 Brigitte Aphrodite


Brigitte Aphrodite

 Band Related Links
Kate Nash Lives Myspace
Brigitte Aphrodite Myspace
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?