If Nadine Shah has ever consciously taken a backwards step it was probably only to tread on the toes of someone she didn’t agree with. Since making her debut in 2013 with Love Your Mads And Dams the singer has grown out from the role of pop singer into something far beyond, a node connecting fans, media, politicians and communities, particularly those of young female performers.
If anything the worldview/atmosphere for British Asians now is even more toxic than the one which informed her previous album, the Mercury Nominated Holiday Destination. This time the trolls are closer to home, prejudiced neighbours exposed on the title track as ‘…the curtain-twitchers/Gossiping boring bunch of bitches”.
Some of the foes are sadly familiar then, but musically the former jazz student and compatriot of Amy Winehouse has shifted towards denser, more rhythmic arrangements, sometimes infusing them with a Latin swing to play alongside her sumptuous voice.
Kitchen Sink finds Nadine Shah turning over the contradictions of modern womanhood out loud with her unique brand of crushing honesty, from the damp squibs of unwanted lust (Club Cougar) to being in place (Trad) and failed relationships (Buckfast, Prayer Mat). That she manages to entertain as much as she provokes is credit to a mind that sees compromise as an admission of defeat.
You can read the full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 