Kitchen Sink

The fourth long-player from the spell-casting English singer/songwriter, Kitchen Sink is aptly named, as Nadine Shah and longtime collaborator/producer Ben Hillier have crafted a wily and inventive collection of songs that pair astute social commentary with crisp, cosmopolitan arrangements drawing from a deep and intuitive arsenal of styles. The follow-up to Shah's Mercury Prize-nominated Holiday Destination, the 11-track set commences with the airy and funky "Club Cougar." Like its predecessor, the scathing "Ladies for Babies (Goats for Love)" is awash in wiggly beats, staccato horns, and flourishes of Tropicalia, with Shah's evocative lyrics and stately, confidant voice wryly and vividly parsing the relationship between sexism and fertility. Exploring the notion of what it means to be both a woman in your thirties and an outsider (Shah was born of Pakistani and Norwegian parentage), the sinewy title track's clanging guitars and strident piano mirror the narrator's insistence on combating cognitive bias with confidence -- it's a strut, not a sprint. There are echoes of Shah's bluesy, noir-pop past peppered throughout Kitchen Sink, most notably on the cinematic "Kite" and the sumptuous closer "Prayer Mat," but the overall vibe is as playful as it is rooted in emotional and societal discord. Like her sonic contemporaries PJ Harvey, Cate Le Bon, and Fiona Apple, Shah presents as a mystery wrapped in an enigma, when in reality she's just innately talented and resolute in her convictions. Unsurprisingly, the mesmerizing Kitchen Sink distills those two predilections into something that's both compelling and otherworldly. ~ James Christopher Monger