The Banter

With other venues on the tour including a social club and a working men's club, the engagements hark back to when she first booked her own show debuting material in a bar before going on to top the album chart with Made of Bricks in 2007.

“It’s just to warm up, and to keep the fans included. I feel they’ve been really supportive and important to me as an artist and I just want to give them a bit of ownership over the songs before the album is released” explained Kate.

The new album title was only announced the day prior to our meeting, and it transpires that for some time, it could have been something far more abstract.

Kate said: “The idea I had was ‘I Wanna Be A Frozen Pea’, which is an X-Ray Spex lyric. It’s kind of about hiding, putting your head in the sand really, but then I thought it seemed a little bit negative so I thought a more positive title along the same lines would be ‘My Best Friend Is You.’

Much of My Best Friend Is You is notably different to Kate's debut, and this can be accredited to finding inspiration in the sixties girl group sound, also made popular again in recent years by the likes of The Pipettes.

“I became obsessed with girl group music, and the One Kiss Can Lead To Another box set, full of rare singles and such, it’s good, you should buy it” said Kate.

“I also listened to The Supremes, The Chiffons, the Flirtations and the Shangri-Las. I love all the vintage stuff. It shouldn’t be replicated but they are good pop tunes. You have to admit there’s a lot of crap pop music out there right now” she added, and it's hard to disagree.

Also involved in the new record is producer Bernard Butler, a former guitarist in Suede during the Britpop era. Kate said: “I got on well with him, it was my boyfriend’s idea, he introduced me to him. He worked with Duffy on her album, so I wasn’t the first female singer-songwriter for whom he had produced.” Kate's boyfriend, for those unaware, is The Cribs frontman Ryan Jarman.

In addition to the new direction for her solo career, last year saw Kate Nash become the bassist for new punk band The Receeders. Formed by friends, the opportunity was one the Londoner couldn't pass up. “I’ve always been a big punk fan” she said.

“My friends said they had started a band called The Receeders, because you need to have a receeding hairline to be in it!” laughed Kate.

“I was like ‘Can I join?’ and they said fine”, mimicking the groans she received in jest from the others.

“We’ve played a bunch of gigs, and every time we’ve practiced we’ve written a new song. So once we get to ten songs, I’d like us to release an album.” she added.

At present, the band notably don't have a MySpace page for their material and unlike many these days, maintaining an online presence doesn't seem too important for the 22 year old.

“I’m scared of it” she said.

“I had a fake on Twitter, who said, ‘my name’s Kate Nash and if you don’t know who I am you better google me’ and she started talking about her friends dying and going to Moscow and playing in Blackpool and stuff and I was like ‘this girl’s crazy’. So I’ve had a lot of fake Twitter pages but I’ve never ‘tweeted’ myself.”

Nash's videos have traditionally been directed by Kinga Burza, but in the video for new single Do- Wah-Doo, what you see is the product of the artist herself. “I wrote the treatment for it, and the label would like me to do that for all my other videos from now on” she said.

The people featured in the video are actually friends and band mates of Kate, something she intends to continue. She said: “I’d like to keep them as the same people in every video, so hopefully you will recognize them in each.”

It was following rejection by the Old Vic Theatre School and becoming housebound after falling down a flight of stairs that Kate was given an electric guitar by her mother and wrote songs before beginning her career. She credits the time alone however for her independence.

“At the time it was pretty lonely, because all my friends were off to uni and I was stuck by myself. I do sometimes think it's a good time for chilling out and developing but having independence really shaped me as a person because I think it's good to be independent” she said.

She felt brave enough to do things on her own. “I went to Paris on holiday by myself, to gigs by myself, and to dinner by myself and not being afraid to do that is good. You really learn that you have so much freedom in what you can do and you don't have to rely on what other people want to do.”

Kate continued: “It's not in a selfish way, but it's really good to spend time being okay hanging out by yourself, not restricted by feeling lonely. Just learn to be brave. A lot of people feel the pressure from having to go to uni and you can be successful in life without it.”

The new album My Best Friend Is You is available now, and Kate will appear at T in the Park this summer.

www.katenash.co.uk