Britain’s Kate Nash has stated (QRO interview) that, when she was making this year’s My Best Friend Is You (QRO review), she looked to girl-groups of the sixties and riot grrrls of the nineties – two styles that, gender apart, would seem to have little to do with one another. Thirty years, the women’s liberation movement, rock ‘n’ roll & more all seem separate the two. And they’re both largely American, unlike Ms. Nash. But she did put them together in her own special way, on record & live, 
like at New York’s Terminal 5 on Friday, November 19th – not even wardrobe malfunctions could stand in her way.
With a full backing band, Nash alternated between singing & playing guitar on stage right, and singing & playing piano on stage left, though definitely favored the latter – and with good reason. In addition to the captivating ‘piano covering’ of semi-lit light bulbs, the piano songs largely delivered better than guitar songs. Opener “I Just Love You More” was a little harsh to open on guitar, but early piano number “Mouthwash” left a great taste in your kisser.
Unfortunately, after both “Mouthwash” and “Kiss That Grrrl”, Nash seemingly disappeared from the stage. After “Grrrl”, she told the crowd that she was having a “wardrobe malfunction”, and that it makes her “feel like Britney Spears…” Nash persevered through great renditions of “Take Me To a Higher Plane” and 
“Don’t You Want To Share the Guilt?”, before having to go backstage for an unplanned “intermission”, as her drummer called it, before making a lame joke to try to fill the time. Openers Pegi Young came to tell a joke about a genie and your wife, but midway through, Nash relieved them (and the Young pair were grateful, not even trying to finish their joke), replacing the difficult blue-sparkly number for a fashionable black-and-white striped poncho.
It wasn’t quite the smoothest intro for the sad, stripped (not striped…) “I Hate Seagulls”, but the loyal audience forgave the cute Nash her cute mishap, and kept quiet during the quiet acoustic guitar song, save for cheering her line of “I hate rude, ignorant bastards”, and chuckling when Nash made a mid-song aside that “chips” in the song are fries. And then, back on piano, Nash launched into the set’s high point, anti-weight issues “Skeleton Song” (which Nash intro-ed by saying, “You don’t have to be hungry to be happy…”), a “Mariella” that would outshine Hermione Grainger (or even Luna Lovegood…), and a really strong “Later On”, her latest Best Friend single.
Unfortunately, Nash then wasted all that momentum by playing the clear worst song on Best Friend, “Mansion Song”. Half slam-poetry, half riot-grrrl percussion-yell, it was as jarring live as on record (at least debut Made of Bricks – QRO review – had its worst song first, “Play”, which Nash thankfully didn’t at Terminal 5). Nash asked the crowd if they’re, “Not afraid of a girl with opinions?…” – the warm reception to “Skeleton” in comparison proved that it wasn’t the message, but how it was sung.
Kate Nash playing “R n B Side” live at Terminal 5 in New York, NY on November 19th, 2010:
Kate Nash climbed back from that slowly with Bricks‘s “Birds” and Best Friend‘s “Early Christmas Present”, but it was a song not on either album that really revived the show, her “attempt at an R ‘n’ B song; what I’d write if I were in Destiny’s Child” – the b-side was dubbed by a band member, “R n B Side”. Nash sang the chorus first, to teach it to the crowd so they could sing then along, “Why’d you have to be such a wanker? / It was better, when it was just me” (after first making sure the American crowd knew what a ‘wanker’ was…). After, Nash returned to the piano for Best Friend‘s “Paris”, before closing the show with back-to-back Bricks “Foundations” and “Merry Happy”, then returning for encore “Pumpkin Soup” (interestingly, not going into encore or closing the night with her breakthrough single, “Foundations”).
Kate Nash playing “Paris” live at Terminal 5 in New York, NY on November 19th, 2010:
Unsurprisingly at the all-ages Terminal 5 (QRO venue review) the Friday night before Thanksgiving week, the crowd was young (guess they were planning on seeing Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows later that weekend…), and, of course, female. Not that a few males didn’t make their voices heard, such as one shouting a request to marry Nash, with which she replied, “Marry you? I can’t even see you!” Lots of young ladies on the balconies had their legs between the railings, feet dangling in the air as they watched, seated on the balcony floors (which doubled the amount of people who could watch the show from the railing, and so should be encouraged at all T5 performances). After the final note, Nash handed out photocopies of what looked like her poetry – a little Jewel-ish, but for today’s girls, in the post-post-feminist world, taking in everything from suffragettes to “Suffragette City”, girl groups to riot grrrl, Destiny’s Child to “Mariella”, it all comes together. Like Kate Nash.
Kate Nash playing “Pumpkin Soup” live at Terminal 5 in New York, NY on November 19th, 2010:
