Nadine Shah - Live at Kentish Town Forum, London - 22nd November 2024
The best things come to those who wait.
Coming off the back of her best album to-date, Nadine Shah has made infrequent live appearances in the UK in 2024.
During her towering performance at Green Man Festival in the summer, the songwriter made a point of saying that she hadn’t been booked for many UK festivals and – perhaps down to the sheer cost of touring – the final show on this leg of the tour is her only British show.
Regardless, the gig conclusively proves that bookers and promoters should hang their heads in shame.
It goes without saying what a superb voice Nadine Shah possesses, but just in case opener ‘Keeping Score’, with dense, throbbing verse and majestic chorus quickly reiterates the point before the jangling Fast Food gets bodies moving to kick off a perfectly pitched set.
Fifth album Filthy Underneath is deservedly earning its place on Albums Of The Year lists and is well represented; the matter-of-fact narrative of ‘Sad Lads Anonymous’, on which Shah relays a crisis of confidence in surroundings both domestic and external (‘Don’t tell me your secrets, I don’t want to know’) is cathartically percussion-heavy, while the modish skit of ‘Even Light’ snaps and bites.