Kate Nash has navigated a remarkable arc since her 2007 breakthrough debut, Made Of Bricks. At the start of 2024, she announced a signing with the storied indie label Kill Rock Stars, but in the months that followed she issued only a couple of singles, including a cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Famine.” On Wednesday, Nash resurfaced with a fresh track called “Spilt Milk” and revealed plans for a new album, Cailín, slated for release in January.
The cover of O’Connor’s iconic tune wasn’t merely tribute; it served as a signal of Nash’s impending artistic shift. Cailín centers on her Irish roots; Nash holds dual nationality, with her mother hailing from Dublin and Nash being raised among an Irish community in London’s North Harrow.
“All of my earliest musical memories come from Ireland: pub gigs, watching Sharon Shannon perform, and spotting the best accordion player you’ve ever seen, while a bored eight-year-old boy in a puffer jacket wandered nearby,” Nash explained in a press statement about the album. “There’s a natural reverence for musicians woven into the fabric of everyday life there.”
The album’s leading track, “Spilt Milk,” blasts out as a razor-edged, punk-tinged, hip-hop-influenced romp. Its lyrics address the intensifying oppression surrounding women’s bodies. Nash elaborated that:
Spilt Milk began as an expression of Ireland’s abortion-law landscape before the Eighth Amendment was repealed (a change that occurred in 2018). It speaks to the loss of bodily autonomy, the sense of not being heard, and the impression that those in power are expanding, intimidating, and crushing. With Roe v. Wade overturned and reproductive rights rolled back in the United States, the song feels especially relevant today. It questions why the female voice is so often dismissed and why we are expected to simply accept it.
Watch the Tom Beard-directed video for “Spilt Milk” below, a piece that also features “Famine.”
TRACKLIST:
01 “I Guess I’ll Never Learn A Thing”
02 “Cailín”
03 “Freedom Of Me”
04 “Famine”
05 “Spilt Milk”
06 “Wild Atlantic Way”
07 “Crying”
08 “Irish Saints”
09 “Póg mo thóin”
10 “Lady Gregory”
11 “Pay Up”
12 “Christmas Eve”
Cailín is scheduled for release on 1/22 via Kill Rock Stars. You can pre-order it here.
