Kate Nash’s
recently released album, Girl Talk is a
departure from her previous “cheeky Britpop” (Ghomeshi) sound, however it is
not as distinct or drastic of a departure as many critics believe. Lauren
Vadnjal, for example, claims that Kate Nash “has gone from sweet and quirky to
90’s feminist punk”, in other words, she has traded in her cute and quirky
aesthetic for an aggressive, full-blown Riot Grrrl sound. While her new album
marks the development of this more aggressive sound, I argue that these
elements have been present, just not as central, to Nash’s previous work. Songs
like "Caroline's a Victim" (2007), “Mansion Song”(2010) and “Don’t You Want to
Share the Guilt”(2010), among others, stand out as particularly Riot
Grrrl-esque songs, in both their sound and content. I will think about Kate
Nash’s Girl Talk as an intersection
between the quirky and the aggressive Riot Grrrl aesthetic. On a larger scale,
I will begin to develop how Kate Nash’s album is representative of a new
feminism that seems to be emerging, or perhaps becoming the dominant, that
draws on residual elements of both the Riot Grrrl aesthetic of the 90’s and
elements of nostalgic quirky kitschiness. If Riot Grrrl is re-emerging, what is
it about the quirky aesthetic that is attractive to its feminist politics? What
meaning might emerge from a Riot Grrrl feminism rooted in a quirky rather than
punk aesthetic?
I propose that, by thinking about
how these two aesthetics inform, rather than oppose each other, the
significance of their being mixed together by Nash, and other contemporary
artists, will emerge. Drawing on two of Nash’s music videos, “Foundations”,
from her first Made of Bricks album, and
“Fri-end?” from Girl Talk, as well as
a few of her songs, I will begin to
outline quirkiness as an aesthetic, sensibility, and tone, focusing on how it
blurs the boundaries between the personal / political and draws on elements of
the everyday and domestic, such as the kitsch object. The everyday object, and
the manipulation of this object, is central to the quirky, but also to the Riot
Grrrl movement, in creating an archive of objects as well as manipulating
everyday objects into crafted and original signifiers. From here, I will
explore Nash’s use of DIY and collage in both her album art and the aural
elements of her songs and think about the rise of DIY / craft culture in contemporary
feminism. Finally, by analysing the movement between songs on her albums as
well as sonic movement in terms of the voice, going from cute to aggressive, I
will explore what happens in the space between the quirky and Riot Grrrl. What
is the effect of Nash moving between these clashing, yet overlapping,
aesthetics?
James MacDowell proposes that the
quirky is not an inherent quality or genre, but a sensibility or tone. The
quirky as a tone Nash perfects the quirky tone in Made of Bricks, complete with the random lyrics and the simple
piano chord progressions. The use of simple piano riffs, like in Nash’s “Pickpocket”
becomes a signifier of the quirky female singer: Lenka, Coeur de Pirate, Regina Spektor. Furthermore, the presence of random, unexpected lyrics defines
the quirky musical. The quirky, in its embrace of everyday, random experiences
and objects, is deeply rooted in the kitsch object. Susan Stewart describes the
kitsch object as “a saturation of materiality, a saturation that takes place to
such a degree that materiality is ironic” (167). The quirky, in its embrace of
kitsch, is an ironic knowingness, a deliberate, intellectual embrace of the
odd, of the awkward. Randomness, as Michael Hirschorn, points out is central to
the quirky: the “embrace of small moments, narrative randomness”. The presence
of the kitschy, everyday objects ties together Kate Nash’s earlier more cutesy
sound with her more aggressive aesthetic in Girl
Talk. These kitsch objects cut through both her music videos as well as
lyrics, popping up at seemingly random moments.
The quirky, therefore, is rooted
in the domestic space of the everyday and uses the odd, random, kitsch objects
of that space as part of its aesthetic. Kate Nash, in “Foundations” scatters
these kitsch objects throughout the narrative: the watches, the toothbrushes,
the socks, the dinosaurs, and the wind-up baby. These last two are perhaps
particularly quirky in their childishness (MacDowell 10). Nash’s use of the
kitsch object contributes to the quirky tone as they convey randomness,
nostalgia as well as playfulness. The quirky, therefore, breaks down the
boundaries between the personal and the political by bringing the kitsch
object, the simplicities of the everyday, to the forefront. This is where,
perhaps, a quirky sensibility lends itself well to Nash’s Riot Grrrl feminist
aesthetic. Nash reasserts the power of the domestic space to be aggressive, to
be political. In her video “Fri-end?” from Girl
Talk, Nash mixes her Riot Grrrl sound with a quirky aesthetic.
While this video has a more aggressive
sound the quirky sensibility is still central. For one, both “Foundations” and “Fri-end?”
take place in a domestic setting, and more specifically, a significant portion
takes part in the kitchen, or the kitschen.
This term alludes to the centrality of the kitsch object to Nash’s domestic
space as well as, what I like to call, her “everything in the kitschen sink style”: the presence of
random objects and lyrics. “Fri-end?”’s aesthetic is incredibly quirky: the
costumes, the dance moves, and the rabbit at 0:45, who also appears in Nash’s
video for “Girl Gang” at 1:30. The transition from Nash in her vampire costume
to a cute bunny rabbit is startling, yet effective. Nash moves from aggressive
to cute, from Riot Grrrl to quirky, accentuating that it is the constant movement
between these two sensibilities that is significant to her feminist politics.
They are not distinct, but mutual. For example, in “Mansion Song” (2010), Nash
sings “I’m an independent woman of the 21st century / No time for knits, I want sex and debauchery
/ I read glamour and the guardian / I like flowers”. The personal, the everyday
:”I read glamour and the guardian” is inextricably tied to the political. Furthermore,
just as the quirky blurs the boundaries between the personal and the political,
so does one of the major aspects of Riot Grrrl culture: the rise of DIY and
craft culture. In the two videos I discussed, Nash incorporates elements of
DIY. In “Fri-ends?” her use of tinted videography creates the nostalgic, yet
kitschy, tone of the instagram filter and in “Foundations” her use of stop motion
animation in the scenes with the socks, toothbrushes, and watches gives her
videos a quirky edge, much like the style of Andrea Dorfman. The DIY
elements represent both the personal becoming political, as well the balance
between innocent childishness and intellectual knowingness that is central to
quirkiness. Thus, Nash’s quirky sensibility is not distinct from her more developed
Riot Grrrl sound, but is central to her feminist politics.
Lisa Butterworth, an editor of BUST magazine, traces the popularization
of craft culture to the mid-nineties Riot Grrrl movement. Sara Marcus, in her
fantastic personal/ collective history of the Riot Grrls, attributes the
coming-together of the movement to DIY objects; the girl-zines, collaged
posters, “necklace[s]. . .cute out of Shrinky Dink plastic, inscribed with the
words RIOT GRRRL and a few hand-drawn stars” were what brought the individual
girls searching for a place to be heard, together (7). Furthermore, DIY offered
an opportunity, as the Riot Grrrl manifesto of 1991 states, “to take over the
means of production in order to create our own moanings” ("Riot Girl Manifesto"):
to communicate the anger, “moanings”, screams, frustration through DIY projects
and low-key music technology. Although the movement lost “the core of its cause”
by 1994, after the media seized hold of the signifiers and commodified the
movement, Butterworth proposes that the legacy it left behind was the resurgence
of DIY culture. She states, [d]espite the movement’s dissolution, girls all
over the country were starting to listen to Riot Grrrl music, pour their hearts
out onto stapled, black-and-white pages, and get their hands dirty with all
kinds of DIY projects”. Since the late 1990s, craft movements such as Stitch ‘n Bitch have emerged, reclaiming
craft as a feminist project. Kate Nash, in both My Best Friend is You and Girl
Talk uses elements of collage in her album art.
Collage
encapsulates a quirky sensibility: it brings together random, kitschy objects
in an intellectual way. Nash uses collage, not only in her album art, but also
in her lyrics. “Don’t’ You Want to Share the Guilt” and “I Hate Seagulls”, using
a sort of stream of consciousness narrative to create a jumble of unattached
statements that come together form a collage. Nash uses found objects and
phrases as part of her collaged album art and lyrics. In this way, both Nash
and the Riot Grrrl movement, in their collages, prompt the audience to
reconsider, to realize forgotten objects. These kitschy objects are imbued with
affect, however, as Stewart notes, the kitsch object, unlike the souvenir, is
apprehended not” on the level of individual biography; rather they are
apprehended on the level of collective identity” (167). Nash’s collages hark
back to the Riot Grrrl archive that is not made of official histories or
monuments, but of objects saturated with a collective affect. Likewise, Ann
Cvetkovich proposes that marginally displaced groups create “archives of
feeling” in which “cultural texts are repositories” for affect” (7). Nash, in
balancing quirkiness, and its embrace of the kitsch object, highlights the
importance of simple, kitschy objects to the creation of counterpublics like
Riot Grrrl. Nash, using these abandonded, but affect-filled objects, in her
album artwork and aural and visual performances, attempts to recreate the
collective feeling of the Riot Grrrl movement. For example, in her video for “3
am” (link), she features a group of roller-skating girls who come together in
solidarity, harking back to the Roller Derbies that were part of the Riot Grrrl
movement. Nash uses the kitsch object as both part of her quirky and DIY Riot
Grrrl aesthetic to recreate the feeling of a collective. Furthermore, Kim Socha
states, in her discussion of feminism, the avant-garde, and animal liberation,
the collage “forces the attentive viewer to consider each element differently,
both on its own and as a whole as it works with other parts” (28). Collages
juxtapose clashing objects of the everyday, such Nash’s above skeleton with a
rabbit. In the collage, these objects take on new significance, their previous
meaning collapsing in order to make way for new significance. Kate Nash, in her
use of collage, calls for a feminist revolution in seeing, in being. Furthermore,
the collage is a coming together of unique parts: it is the individual becoming
collective, the everyday objects becoming political.
Nash, in the abrupt movements
between the quirky and aggressive Riot Grrrl aesthetic, opens up a space to
define the emerging feminist politics. In Girl
Talk, Nash moves from soft-sounding lullabies like “Labyrinth” to the in-your-face
sound of “Sister”. The juxtaposition of the soft/ cute with the aggressive sound
only makes the guttural yells, the broken cries stick out more. The quirky sound
and lyrics of something like “You’re So Cool, I’m So Freaky” intensifies the
anger, the frustration, the rawness of a song like “Rap of Rejection”. “Rap for
Rejection” is perhaps the most Riot Grrrl-esque song on her album as Nash
overtly asserts her feminist political project: “You’re tryna tell me sexism doesn’t
exist / If it doesn’t exist, then what the fuck is this?”. However, Nash pairs
this strong political message with a lack of Riot Grrrl passion. Nash keeps a
monotone voice throughout the song until the very end when, after stating “No
they can’t shut us up”, she releases three aggressive yells. The song lulls you
into a comfortable space and then breaks through the monotony, waking the
listener up, calling her/him to action. Therefore, Nash strategically moves
between a soft and aggressive sound, a quirky and Riot Grrrl sensibility, to
further her feminist message; to make the anger and frustration truly transform
the listener, Nash pairs it with a quirky sensibility, enticing the listener
with comfort and nostalgia only to call them to a revolution, a riot, with her aggressive and raw screams and yells.
Nash’s album, I think, is
representative of a larger cultural, or feminist, movement that draws on DIY
elements of Riot Grrrl but infuses them with a quirky sensibility. Butterworth
attributes part of the resurgence of Riot Grrrl to the rise of blogging
technology that function similarly to zines. One significant online zine is Rookie magazine, created by thirteen year old Tavi Gevinson who was inspired by
the Riot Grrrl zines of the nineties. This magazine, like Nash’s Girl Talk, balances quirkiness, with its
random topics, and serious political issues. Rookie’s feminism focuses on the “grrrl”,
the young feminist, and provides inspiration on the level of personal DIY
projects and political projects. Rookie, like Kate Nash, embraces everyday
simplicity, the awkward, the cute, the sentimental, and the angry, all of which
are part of this emerging, if not already dominant, feminism. Nash’s retrieval of
the Riot Grrrl sound fits well into this trending feminism that embraces the DIY craft
culture of something like Stich n’ Bitch,
the quirky, but raw humour of someone like Lena Dunham, the awkwardness and dead-pan humour of
someone like Aubrey Plaza, and the nostalgic kitsch of the layout of Rookie
magazine. These artists and magazines attempt to collapse the personal and the political,
asserting the power of everyday objects, gestures, or sounds, in subverting the
normal. Sara Marcus states, “the can backfiring, the bookstore crowd murmuring,
the baby breathing slowly, the bell ringing for fifth period – this is the
sound of a revolution” (330). The Riot Grrrl Revolution happens not on the
stage, but at the level of the everyday.
Kate Nash
reclaims the power of the ordinary, the kitsch in Girl Talk by juxtaposing these objects with her aggressive
aesthetic. Kate Nash’s quirkiness is not distinct, but as I have argued, is inextricable
from her Riot Grrrl feminism. The kitsch object is central to both aesthetics
and both draw on DIY and craft culture. While her first two albums contain
elements of this more aggressive sound and overt political content, Girl Talk represents the crystallization
of her kitschen sink meets Riots
Grrrl aesthetic. Nash, in “Don’t You Want to Share the Guilt” (2010), asks “Listen,
can you hear it? / if you speak, will I feel it?”, marking the emergence of a
new affective structure that she cannot yet articulate into words. In Girl Talk, Kate Nash is finally able to“
articulate what [she] want[s] to say” (“Don’t You…) by balancing her quirky sensibility
with a Riot Grrrl aesthetic and feminism. Nash distinguishes herself from other
female singers who draw on elements of the quirky but are not as overtly
political, like She & Him, by lending her quirkiness to the re-volution of
Riot Grrrl. Ultimately, Nash, in Girl
Talk, proves that the quirky elements of the everyday can the grounds for a
radical riot against the conventional.
Works Cited
Butterworth, Lisa. “Girl Power, DIY Culture and the Age of
the Riot Grrrl.” The Etsy Blog. 9
April 2012. Web. 9 April 2013.
Cvetkovich, Ann. An
Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures.Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Print.
Gevinson, Tavi. Rookie
Magazine. Rookie, 2013. Web. 9 April 2013.
Ghomeshi, Jian. “Kate Nash on ‘Girl Talk’ and girl power in
Studio Q.” CBC Radio. 11 March 2013. Web. 9 April 2013.
Hirschorn, Michael. “Quirked Around.” The Atlantic. 1 Sept. 2007. Web. 9 April 2013.
MacDowell, James. “Wes Anderson, Tone, and the Quirky
Sensibility.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 10.1 (2012):
6-27. Academic Search Premier. Web.
10 April 2013.
Marcus, Sara. Girls to
the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010. Print.
Nash, Kate. Girl Talk.
Ingrooves, 2013. CD.
---. Made of Bricks. Universal,
2007. CD.
---. My Best Friend is
You. Geffen, 2013. CD.
“Riot Grrrl
Manifesto”. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 April 2013.
Socha, Kim. Women,
Destruction, and the Avant-Garde: A Paradigm for Animal Liberation. New York: Rodopi, 2012. Print.
Stewart, Susan. “On Longing.” Objects of Desire. Durham: Duke U P, 1993. 150-167. Print.
Vadnjal, Lauren. “Kate Nash Goes Riot Grrrl.” Portable. n.d. Web. 9 April 2013.
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