The need to tour, which for many artists is also an economic necessity, is driving a greater reliance on guitar-driven sounds and textures designed to work onstage. That’s roughly how the new Kate Nash sounds. The Kate Nash behind “Foundations” is light-years away from “Spilt Milk,” although it’s true she already flirted with punk on “My Best Friend Is You.”
“Spilt Milk” is a solid track. It’s basically punk, but filtered through a rather wild industrial sound, with incisive synths and roaring electric guitars. Live, it will surely gain a lot, although on record it feels somewhat compact. It reads more as a protest song to unleash anger than as a track aimed at hooking you in with good vibes.
Nash, one of the most political voices in English pop, originally wrote “Spilt Milk” about Ireland’s abortion laws, before the country repealed the Eighth Amendment in 2018. Now the song has taken on new relevance for her after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States. Nash defines it as a song about “not having control over your own body, not being heard.”
The title plays with the popular phrase “don’t cry over spilt milk,” but here the milk is something she herself has produced and about which others want to decide: a straightforward metaphor for talking about control over one’s own body.
“Spilt Milk” serves as a foretaste of “Cailín,” Kate Nash’s new album set to arrive on January 22. The record has been in development for 11 years and was recorded on the west coast of Ireland, with production by KoOoLkOjAk and the participation of traditional musician Charlie Lennon.
Nash has framed the album around her Irish identity, tackling also family, forgiveness, love, colonialism, inequality, religion, and internalized shame, with nods to the country’s folklore and mythology,
