Merry Happy

I stumbled across Kate Nash last November when her adorable little ditty "Merry Happy" closed out an episode of MTV's Parental Control. Now that I have risked my credible career as an indie music reviewer by dropping the wretched letters "M-T-V".. but frankly my dear readers, my discovery of Kate Nash has made me so happy and oblivious that I don't really give a damn. I was bopping along to her songs on my IPod five minutes after I first heard this single.

Kate Nash is an agreeable study in music evolution. Not that her lyrics or music are that odd, or cutting edge, although her video for Pumpkin Soup employs a host of Muppet back-up dancers, and Nash herself, with a defiant face of smeared lipstick. The ridiculous English major in me compares her to a Post-Modernistic revolution, a deconstruction of pop. Artistically, Kate Nash seems to simultaneously mock and revere the pop scene both in her native UK and the States. Her music plays hopscotch in the train wreck of a music biz that has both killed and forcefully resurrected one Britney Spears, and it's all quite hilarious.

Mainly though, I just love that Nash hurls epithets like "D**khead" through her album and still manages to sound like a precocious young Brit offering you a scone.