Embed and breakfast man: Kate Nash

To offset the bad taste of Hollywood deciding to not let Dre beating a woman up spoil a good story, here's Kate Nash talking to Broadly:

Embed and breakfast man: Kate Nash

I'm a little in love with the new Kate Nash, turned-around-in-a-day track:



I'm even more in love with the flicker of horror that creeps over the faces of people online as they play it. "Oh noes, this sounds experimental and isn't even pretty. Oh noes, oh noes."

Kate Nash is great. And has always been more than just pretty pop songs:



You can download Underestimate The Girl for free, unless you're all "but it doesn't have a chorus".

Hopefully this will make things right, America

Second-wave Kate Nash has perhaps split opinion a bit, but she's just announced that her American tour support is going to be Peggy Sue.

Of course that's exciting. Here's one of those streaming-audio box widgety things with Lover Gone trapped inside it:




A reason to go out. If you're American.

These are the dates:

10/29/2010 Los Angeles The Music Box
10/30/2010 San Francisco Warfield Theatre
11/1/2010 Portland Wonder Ballroom
11/2/2010 Seattle Showbox at the Market
11/3/2010 Vancouver Commodore Ballroom
11/5/2010 Salt Lake City In the Venue
11/6/2010 Denver Ogden Theatre
11/8/2010 Iowa City Englert Theatre
11/9/2010 Chicago Vic Theatre
11/11/2010 Columbus Newport Music Hall
11/12/2010 Detroit Majestic Theatre
11/13/2010 Toronto Phoenix Concert Theatre
11/15/2010 Washington 9:30 Club
11/17/2010 Philadelphia Theatre of Living Arts
11/18/2010 Boston Paradise Rock Club
11/19/2010 New York Terminal 5
11/20/2010 Montclair Wellmont Theatre

Kate Nash: Supreme or chicken supreme?

Plucked from something she did for Virgin Radio, this is either an act of unspeakable desecration or a loving tribute. Kate Nash covers the Supremes:



[via The Music Slut]

Made of brickbats

Kate Nash is delighted she beat Leona Lewis at the the Brit awards:

She went on to say “it was really good I won it because I started this myself. I’m not a manufactured, size-zero pop artist who is going to bring out her own perfume and clothes range.”

This might be slightly more convincing were it not for Nash having gone to the Brits school. And to be insisting that you're real, while seeing the receiving of an award from the BPI on a live TV show presented by the Osbournes as some sort of high-water mark for riot grrl seems to be pushing it a bit, too.

NME Awards 2008: Oh, the Arctic Monkeys won.

The NME awards have been doled out tonight, mostly going to the Arctic Monkeys, as seems to be the way, once again proving that the alternative to the Brits works by, erm, giving the same prizes to the same people.

And they had the Klaxons playing as well.

The backstage blogging from the site is a little toe-curling:

Big Gig VIP Party: Too cool for school

Imagine a backstage party so cool that the hottest model in London and one of the coolest bands from Scotland gets turned away from.

The party is so full that Agyness Deyn and Franz Ferdinand are still queuing to get in.

Is this the NME or the Daily Star? And if they're queuing to get in, how have they been turned away?

Those prize winners in full, then:

Best band: Arctic Monkeys
Best track: Fluorescent Adolescent
Best video: Teddy Picker

Best album: Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
Best solo artist: Kate Nash
Best new band: The Enemy
Best live band: Muse (Muse could probably win this even if they didn't play any gigs for the year)
Godlike Genius: Morrissey scribbled out and replaced by Manics
Hero: Pete Doherty (it's not actually clear for what, although having the chutzpah to flog that bloody journal to publishers might count)
Villain: George W Bush (Like the US electorate, the NME voters turn on him when it's too late to make a difference)
Worst band: The Hoosiers
Worst album: Blackout - Britney Spears
Best international band: The Killers (really? Really?)
Best music DVD: Nirvana - Unplugged In New York
Best live event: Reading / Leeds Festivals (Is it really fair that two separate events have their votes added together? Since it's unlikely anyone attended both - apart from those involved - shouldn't you vote for one or the other?
Best TV show: The Mighty Boosh
Best film: Control
Best website: Facebook (But that's a cop-out, isn't it? It's not like Facebook has any content, it's like being asked to vote for your favourite radio show and choosing Radio 4.)
Best dressed: Noel Fielding (Fair enough. He puts in the hours on it.)
Worst dressed: Amy Winehouse
There are too many awards, aren't there? Way, way too many
Sexiest man: Noel Fielding (Oh, hang on now... he's alright, but not when he turns in profile. You still might, but surely the sexiest man has to work right round the sextant?)
Sexiest woman: Kylie Minogue
Radar award: Glasvegas (this is the NME staff's brightest hope prize)
Best dancefloor filler: The Wombats - Let's all dance to Joy Division
Too, too many categories. It's like prize giving day at the world's most egalitarian schools.
Best album design: The Good The Bad And The Queen (Because Damon Albarn has to win something, just in case)
Best band blog: Radiohead
Best music blog: The Modern Age

NME plays hotornot

It's Valentine's Day. Oh, you'd heard?

The NME is marking the day by inviting readers to rate pop stars on sexual attractiveness. Well, they're actually asking you to rate people on a 1 to 10 scale on how much you'd like to spend Valentine's Day night with, which we guess you might interpret as anything from 'sitting in a pub bemoaning the whole Hallmark-induced fantasy of romantic love' to 'dangling from the ceiling dressed in a rubber bitch-suit as they prod you in every orifice with pneumatic sex toys'. So it's not clear exactly what the voters have in mind when they're voting, but there's some early results, anyway.

Apparently, NME readers would like to spend Valentines Evening with either Kate Nash or Nicky Wire.

Mind you, the choice of men to rate could send a bisexual bloke straight - click! D'you fancy Liam Gallagher? click! How about Serge Pizzorno? click! Pete Doherty...?

Bedingfield: Cockneys aren't normal

We presume - we hope - that Natahsa Bedingfield was talking about exaggerated voices on records when she suggested cockney voices aren't normal:

"When I was in England last year it was all about girls with Cockney accents - Lily Allen and Kate Nash. It's all inspired by people like The Streets and Dizzee Rascal.

"I liked it but I'll be happy when normal voices come back."

Although Allen and Nash don't have cockney accents anyway, do they? Aren't they more estuarine?

Brits nominations sort of live

Oh, lord... did they really introduce ITV2's coverage of the 2008 Brits nominations with The Final Countdown? Really?

Here are Reggie and Kelly, then, trying to force some pizzazz into a second-tier event. But first: Editors.

We like Editors, but we can't work out if they're here because Coldplay are too grand, or because the Brits organisers believe they're an example of the Best British Music today (albeit not good enough for the Brits proper.)

After they're finished, Kelly trills "we've kept you waiting long enough", which suggests they're seen as ballast, padding out a few lists of band names just enough to make a programme fit for ITV2.

Nominations underway, then. First, Best British Group (wasn't this the sort of category you should build to?)

Kaiser Chiefs - who might have just about counted for last year's awards, but don't appear to have done anything memorable since;
Arctic Monkeys - who were, at least, slightly more visible than the Kaisers;
Girls Aloud - who should waltz this against the competition;
Editors - who at least turned up this evening; and
Take That - who advertised both Marks and Spencers and Morrisons. Simultaneously. Can't be trusted.

International male solo artist:

Kanye West - who might turn up if he's promised he'll win;
Rufus Wainwright - really? The international equivalent of Take That? Really?
Bruce Springsteen - now, he's the international male Take That
Michael Buble - snurkle! You're joking, right?
Timbaland - although he might have been voted for by people thinking he was the same as Justin Timberlake

British breakthrough

Kate Nash - funded by the Brits awards past so surely a conflict of interest, right?
Kalxons - didn't they breakthrough a while back?
Bat For Lashes - turning up here tonight, but not entirely sure the "breakthrough" really has happened yet?
Leona Lewis - well, popular, yes, but didn't her breakthrough come the Christmas before last?
Mika - broke through; disappeared instantly

"We're speeding through the show" says Reggie, as if they're in danger of running out of material before the first break.

Sadly they don't.

Oh, lord, there's a taped insert from Sharon Osbourne wishing "smelly Kelly" luck.

More noms:

British male solo artist

Mark Ronson - whose success is based on collaborating with other artists and isn't really solo in any sense
Newton Faulkner - a man who thinks a review calling him "the British Jack Johnson" is something to be proud of
Richard Hawley - every category has one great act who doesn't stand a horse's chance in a dog race
Jamie T - still yet to qualify for British breakthrough, though, hasn't he?
Mika - Perhaps it's a joke. Maybe they're joking

International album

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible - only slightly disappointing as a follow-up
Eagles - Long Road Out Of Eden - have yet to meet anyone in Britain who even knows this has been released, much less who cares
Kylie - X - but for the long, health-induced gap in her career, this would have been seen as her Madonna moment, where the magic has gone and all that is left is production and memories
Kings Of Leon - Because Of The Times - The junior Eagles
Foo Fighters - Echoes... - This will win, because everyone loves Dave Gorhl and wants to check he'll turn up

Female solo artist

Alicia Keys - Still going, apparently
Bjork - we know she's still going, she beat someone up in a airport to prove she's still alive
Rhianna - all one song
Feist - see Richard Hawley
Kylie - she was alright in Dcotor Who, wasn't she?

There's now some more business about the Osbournes; Kelly is revealing how "fun" it'll be because her parents can't speak without swearing: "where's the fun without profanities?"

On tape again, it's back to Sharon: "I didn't think the Brits would ask us." No, we didn't see it coming, either. Not in 2008. She mumbles something about not being Trevor McDonald and keeps repeating "it should be fun", like she's desperately trying to convince herself as well as us.

Bat For Lashes is the next live act, doing exactly the sort of thing that should be in the proper Brits - an acoustic What's A Girl To Do? - but will never appear, as actual spine-chilling music must make way for Jason Orange and Prince jamming to covers of Beyonce tracks or whatever this year's musical entertainment might be.

To be fair to the organisers, at least this year's nominations have made a little bit of effort to include some less-obvious acts, if you can call saying "ooh... what was the song on that iPod advert again" as pushing the envelope.

Kelly says that the Brits are "a credible event which helps fund the Brit school...", which is half true.

Leona Lewis has gone back to the Brits school to show what her alma mater is like - but if they're that good at training people for music industry skills, how did she end up begging for a job on the X-Factor? It's like Harvard Business School being proud if one of their graduates winds up on The Apprentice.

Now Mark Ronson has turned up for an interview.

"How do you feel?"
"I feel... Brit...ish"

The interview lasts five seconds. He seems less than impressed.

More padding now, as they ask artists of the sort prepared to appear in a package about 'who do you like' what they think about the nominations for best British male. Kate Nash is positive about Newton Faulkner. Craig David says Mika is "very unique", as if there are degrees of uniqueness.

There's an awful lot of padding.

The advertisers in the commercials include mouthwash and computer dating agencies. Who, exactly, do they think will be watching this programme, then?

Kelly Osbourne trills "coming up, we've got some more live performances, but first back to the serious business of music" - so what are the live performances going to be, then? Magicians? Vent acts?

Another slew of nominations - it's odd that these are just being churned out on tape, while the programme makes room for acres of other old bits of shit. Couldn't they at least have got someone - anyone - to come out and read them out of a piece of paper in a big gold envelope?

Best live act
The Klaxons - hmm
Take That - hmm
Kaiser Chiefs - hmm
Muse - hmm
Arctic Monkeys - hmmm

This whole category is just there to provide a nice gift for the boys who don't run fast enough to win one of those proper prizes, as hardly anyone is going to be in a position to be able to vouch for all the shortlist, so it's just guessing, really, isn't it?

International group
Foo Fighters - they'll be replaced next year with the red Hot Chili Peppers, of course, as they alternate
Eagles - if all the votes from anyone under 50 are discounted
Kings Of Leon - depsite the novelty having worn off sometime around summer 2006, still popular with industry insiders, it seems
Arcade Fire - it'd be nice if they did win, wouldn't it?
White Stripes -... unless it turns them the way critical acclaim made the White Stripes (i.e. Jack) go as pompous as Captain Mainwearing

British female artist
KT Tunstall - "or do we mean Sandi Thom? which was the one who didn't vanish?"
PJ Harvey/Bat For Lashes/Kate Nash - funny; normally this is the category which is scrabbling around for actual talent active in the year in question to nominate, which is why Annie Lennox usually turns up, but this year they're spoiled for choice...
Leona Lewis - ... but will probably give it to the one off the telly anyway.
No Winehouse, you'll note.

There's a new award now - the "Critic's Choice". Blimey, there's Peter Robinson talking about it. It seems to be some sort of attempt to redress the balance of the awards being shit, so they've asked journalists to come up with someone a bit more exciting. It's restricted to artists releasing debut albums.

Foals and Duffy lose out to (ex Brits school) Adele. So not only have they done the credible award off on the prelaunch programme, but they've also managed to choose the dullest of the three who was being underwritten by the Brits organisation anyway. The funny thing is, Adele does have a great career ahead of her - but it's clearly a Mari Wilson/Sam Brown lite-jazz, occasional-live-spot-on-Woman's-Hour type of career. Brilliant to watch, but not going to save the UK record industry.

Another sludgy collection of 'who will Sugababes vote for, assuming they don't attack them with sticks' vox pops. The Klaxons say Kate Nash could be the next Cilla Black; that's probably not as insulting as they intend it to be.

Mika is wearing braces: "Bat For Lashes is very creative... and not the norm..."

Apparently, there's more of this sort of thing on the Brits website. Don;t all rush at once.

Brits performers being run down now:
Kaiser Chiefs (they've promised not to do I Predict A Riot, honest)
Kylie (she was alright on Doctor Who, remember)
Leona Lewis (this is ITV)
Rhianna (doing... go on, guess)
Mika (it's like when they booked The Darkness too early and nobody cared any more by the time the show came round...)
Mark Ronson (they half hope he'll bring Amy; the half hope he'll bring Candie Payne instead)

Oh, god, they've sent Jodie Harsh to ask passers-by what the best single of 2008 was: it's like a cross between Lily Savage's Blankety Blank and That's Life.

They keep trailing the Hoosiers as if that's something to stop you turning over to see Trevor McDonald crawling out of retirement.

Ricky Wilson is now being interviewed - let's assume he's just been up early delivering milk and not, in any way, out of his gourd on the diminishing largess of the major labels, shall we? He does admit that Kaiser Chiefs are simple.

Top ten singles, from which the world can vote:
Kate Nash - Foundations
James Blunt - 1973
Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love
Mark Ronson - Valerie
Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
Mutya Buena - Real Girl
The Hoosiers - Worried About Ray
Take That - Shine
Mika - Grace Kelly
Sugababes - About You Now

The Hoosiers? How the hell did they get in this list? I mean... really?

British album:
Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare - the record which defined the year as being the year they released an album that was, you know, okay
Leona Lewis - Spirit - in with the running as the "happy Mother's Day" lazy gift choice of the year
Mark Ronson - Version - the sort of record which execs and Jo Whiley love, but doesn't really make an emotional connection with
Mika - Life In Cartoon Motion - stop it, it's not funny any more
Take That - Beautiful World - the "so, timmy got you Leona Lewis, and I got you this, Mum" choice

My god; they really have built up towards The Hoosiers as the peak of the evening. It's 'quirky' and 'off-kilter' for people who believe they, themselves, are quirky and off-kilter. Also, the song is a rip off of Happy Together for people who would rather think themselves quirky and off-kilter than listen to The Turtles.

Oh, hang on, there's one more award to announce - a prestigious one, too: the 'well done for not dying Paul McCartney award'.

So, the scene is set for the big event then: or, at leaat, the odds have been firmly stacked against it. This has been kind of the kid's table at the wedding.

XFM debut album shortlist listed

The not-entirely-neccessary Debut Album Award being punted by XFM has revealed the shortlist voted for by listeners:

Air Traffic - Fractured Life
the Enemy - We’ll Live and Die in These Towns
Frank Turner - Sleep is for the Week
Kate Nash - Made of Bricks
Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
the Maccabees - Colour it in
the Pigeon Detectives - Wait for Me
the Twang - Love it When I Feel Like This
the View - Hats Off to the Buskers
the Wombats - Proudly Present… a Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation

Is it just us, or has music actually felt a lot more exciting this year than that list would suggest?

XFM flatter their listener's choice, for all the world like a guest at an ambassador's party:

"We've always known that Xfm listeners have excellent taste and here is more proof," said Xfm music chief Mike Walsh.

"This is a very strong list of 10 great British debut albums and Xfm is proud to have been associated with all of them. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the judges decide is the overall winner, it will not be an easy call".

... although clearly, it's either going to be Kate Nash or the Klaxons. After all, they're not going to all the time and money and expense to give it to, say, The Wombats, garnering a small mention on page thirteen of the broadsheets when they could give the prize to Nash, and get at least a photo on the entertainment pages of the tabloids.

Women in rock in 2007

Here we are, on the cusp of 2008, and the Daily Telegraph is running a 'women in pop' piece.

It's flawed as well as hackneyed, hailing a phenomenon that doesn't quite exist:

What's intriguing about this new wave of female singer-songwriters is that they are not fringe acts - they are firmly in the mainstream. While the folk, rock and jazz scenes have always provided a home for maverick solo females, from Kate Bush to PJ Harvey and Björk, the mainstream pop industry has rarely invested in girls with guitars: it has always preferred them dressed-up and dancing. A figure such Joni Mitchell, until now the epitome of this kind of artist, may have been many things, but poptastic she wasn't.

Now, we're not sure the artists they're pointing to - Kate Nash, Lily Allen, Remi Nicole, Amy Winehouse - are exactly mainstream pop; they're doing well in the charts, yes, but then so does Bjork and Lennox and Blondie.

And, yes, mainstream pop might not expect the women to play instruments on their hits - Girls Aloud, Sugababes, Leona Lewis - but then Take That, Westlife and Robbie Williams seldom turn up with Fenders slung over their shoulders, either. And Winehouse doesn't turn up with a guitar, come to that, and yet the Telegraph reckons she's part of this 'movement'.

Remi Nicole, pressed into this article as evidence, actually undercuts the paper's thesis by making it clear that she's not influenced by mainstream pop at all:

"In the past, if you wanted to be a pop star you had to go to Pineapple studios and audition with your jazz hands to be in some Spice Girls-type band. You would never have been able to write your own songs. Then bands such as the Libertines came along and you could see them playing their own instruments like the old days. Now you can get an instrument and just record a song and get going. The scene now embraces anyone who wants to tell stories about their own life."

Yes, this is, if anything, actually a 'resurgence of rock' article rather than a 'women in rock' piece.

Bernadette McNulty even manages to contradict herself in the course of the think piece. At one point, it's all sisters are doing it for themselves:

Ajax Scott, publisher of industry magazine Music Week, suggests that specialist music courses are producing savvier young musicians.

"It used to be that girls would have to wait for a Svengali to pick you up and learn the business. Now if you are into music and you are lucky enough to get into a music school, you get to learn the business so you enter the industry slightly less wide-eyed and naive."

So, Svengalis are out, then?

Only...

This month Remi Nicole releases her first album, produced by the team behind Lily Allen.

So sisters are doing for themselves, just organised by the team behind Lily Allen.

We're bitterly sorry that Remi Nicole has found herself caught in such a woolly and half-assed article. There is much that is interesting her about her, but the fact that she happens to share a chromosome make-up with KT Tunstall and Kate Nash isn't it.

Buried in the article, though, is a more interesting one trying to get out: it touches on how Nicole, Nash, Winehouse and Melua have all been to the record industry funded Brits School; this raises all sorts of questions about the extent to which this gives young musicians an advantage and - more importantly - if the turning out of a large numbers of acts which can be marketed to the mainstream as 'slightly edgy' is choking off the chances for talent who don't have the music industry paying for their education to get access to the top table.

Nash for no cash

Oddly, considering the easy-filing system which posts Kate Nash as being "a bit like Lily Allen from an outlet shop", Nash has now had an echo of Allen's problems with US visas. Instead of coming home and posting an incoherent rant on MySpace, though, Nash went ahead and played New York - but wasn't able to accept any money for the performance. She was, however, rewarded with cookies from Music Snobbery blog.

Arctics, Winehouse seek an Q 'aye'

We can never remember if the Q Awards are the first awards of 2008 which look back at the whole of 2007, or the final awards of 2007 which effectively celebrate 2006.

It's Q. It's going to be last year, isn't it?

Anyway, the shortlist is out, although not, confusingly, on the Q website, so, cobbling together the nominees from the BBC report, we get:

Best Act In The World Today:
The Killers
The Arctic Monkeys
Muse
The Foo Fighters
U2

U2? Can that be right? Maybe it's looking back to 2004 after all.

Best Album:
Arctic Monkeys- Favourite Worst Nightmare
Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
Kaiser Chiefs - Yours Truly, The Angry Mob
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Manic Street Preachers - Send Aways The Tigers

We thought that our eyebrows could shoot up no further than they managed for the Kaiser Chiefs... but the Manics album? Really? One of the best five of the year?

Breakthrough artist:
Kate Nash
Mika
Jack Penate
Jamie T
Calvin Harris

Looking at this, you might cry a salt tear for the state of British music.

Best track:
Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
Athlete - Hurricane
Manic Street Preachers - Your Love Alone...
Suburban Knights - Hard Fi
Kings of Cydonia - Muse

Presumably Muse have been allowed in to reassure you that, no, this really is 'best track' and not a new category for 'sleep-walked-through band-by-numbers self-parody of the year'. It took me about two minutes staring at the words "Athlete Hurricane" before I could remember if it was a track Athlete by Hurricane, or Hurricane by Athlete, and - absolutely genuinely - I realised I'd typed 'Snow Patrol - Athlete' into the list.

Nash, Coxon fight for the market

Kate Nash and Graham Coxon are actively campaigning to save Camden Market in the face of a totally unfathomable attempt to replace it with a shopping centre.

Okay, it's not unfathomable - we actually understand the concept of "buttock-headed, culture-destroying, profit-driven selfishness" - but what is unfathomable is that this idea can even be floated to the point where gigs are having to be organised to save the market.

Nash is playing the market on Thursday; Coxon, meanwhile, has spoken to the local paper:

"This is a pathetic attempt at modernisation, What's going to be in it? More Starbucks coffee houses and Carphone Warehouses?

"It should be full of tailors, shoemakers, cheesemakers and independent shops, but of course they are not going to do that."

Maybe not cheesemakers, Graham. It took Camden long enough to get Alex James out of its patch last time.

Nash bashes hash

Who knew that putting a stop to drugs would only take senior politicians starting to talk about how they dabbled while they were at college? Now, everyone is rushing to disassociate themselves from drug culture faster than they fled bluejeans when Jeremy Clarkson started to be known for wearing them.

Kate Nash, for one, is clear that she doesn't like drugs:

"Drugs are ugly and scary, stuff like coke, I'd just hate to put something up my nose.

"And it just hits you there [top of the nose] and destroys part of your brain!

"I've been tempted. But I've got really heightened emotions anyway. I can get really over-excited about... a biscuit!"

So she spends her weekends getting Tuced up, then.

What the pop papers say: Mini-NME

We make this the fourth, or is it fifth, redesign of Conor McNicholas' reign as NME editor - he introduces the new look issue with a letter signed "The Editor", and there are two notable things from the off: the first is that it's even smaller, as the paper continues to shrink like Doctor Who on the wrong end of a laser screwdriver. It can now hide, comfortably, behind Rolling Stone.

The other noteworthy point is that it's not as disastrous as early reports had made it sound - rather than a further evisceration of content, this relaunch is more about rationalising the content. It looks quite bitty, but then the content has been bitty for a while; now, at least, it's organised like a professional buffet instead of a fumbled picnic basket.

It'll be interesting to see what it's like when it doesn't have the T in the Park, Oxegen and Live Earth coverage to give its front half some shape - there's clearly a firming up of the attempt to make photography one of the reasons for people to buy the paper (although a cover splash for "free aerial photo of T in the Park" pushes it a bit - that's a picture on an ordinary page, then, is it?) and the weekend festivals have offered a lot of stuff to fill those slots; quite how successful that'll be during the soggy-arse end of November remains to be seen.

If it's good news for photographers, it's not quite so good news for the writers - the longest article is the Kate Nash piece, there's a half-article on Bonde De Role, but that's as deep as it gets. Karen O is interviewed by readers via NME's MySpace - where you can go to put questions for The Cribs next week. As if apparently aware that sending traffic to a rival publisher's website is probably not the smartest move, you're then instructed to "keep checking NME.com to see if your question has been picked". The O interview is trailed as being "her weirdest ever", but it's not especially weird, the odd question about 'what sort of beard would you have' aside: it's all 'how would you like to die' and 'do you believe in god'? Its as weird as the Sunday Correspondent Questionnaire and nowhere near as left-field as the Smash Hits' regular quizzings.

Conor pledges "more album reviews" in his intro, which is managed by giving fifty words to a dozen records - we can figure out why Stephanie Dosen's album A Lily For The Spectre is worth eight marks, but not only a few handfull of words. The reviews are now shorter than the little puffs they used to give when they had a round-up of the best albums from the previous month.

If they needed more space to allow longer album reviews, they could free up a whole page by dropping the "reader's photos" page as quickly as they introduced it - the old "this is me with the drummer from Cud" bar has now been dropped still further, and we're treated to a full cover of someone who has had Mani write on their shoe, and some bloke in a shop "dressed as a glam rocker" (he isn't.) It's like that pointless "pleased to meet you" column which the Guardian does on Saturdays and nobody reads, only out of focus.

The other big problem with this iteration of the NME is that it doesn't have a clue what it is anymore. There's Kate and Karen, but also New Order and Morrissey bits; there's a full page marking The Verve's reunion, which is written with the apparent assumption that people might have heard of Ashcroft, but know little of him (we should point out that the 'full page' is mainly a photograph). So the new target reader seems to be someone who'd be worried about Mozzer retiring and how faithful the Joy Division movie is, but who doesn't know about the Mad Richard years. Someone who'd buy a magazine because there's The View on the cover, but not minding there's only a brief review about them inside. A person who won't count the advertising pages ratio - about 40%, as it turns out.

The revamp has gone a long way to properly organizing the magazine the NME has become, but the big worry has to be that it now doesn't look like a publication that anyone would have come up with if they'd been starting from scatch.

LDN is a mid-tour visit

Kate Nash has just announced a UK tour:

The Great Escape Festival (May 19)
Reading Fez Club (20)
Leeds Cockpit (25)
Bristol Fiddlers (26)
Nottingham Rock City (27)
Birmingham Glee (29)
London ICA (31)
Wakefield Escobar (June 2)
Manchester Late Room (3)
Liverpool The Loft (4)
York Fibbers (5)
Edinburgh Henry's (7)
Aberdeen Tunnels (8)
Dundee Reading Rooms (9)
Glasgow King Tut's (10)
Newcastle Cluny (12)
Exeter Cavern (14)
Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach (15)
Sheffield Leadmill (July 23)

There's no word yet on if she's going to launch her own clothes line at Tammy Girl.

Victim support: Kate Nash signs

The world, of course, splits into two camps of hugely unequal proportions when it comes to Kate Nash; we're on the love side, and, yes, we know that's quite a lonely place to be.

However, it seems Fiction are on this side, too, as Drowned In Sound are reporting that the anti-Allen has signed a deal with Universal sub-label Fiction Records. She's expected to spend the advance on cake and thrift shop dresses.