Nadine Shah
Holiday Destination 1965. CD/DL/LP
South Tyneside singer scrutinises a world out of joint on third album. Anger doesn’t often encourage control, but with this follow-up to 2015’s Fast Food, Nadine Shah directs her fury at a toxic world into songs so focused they could burn through metal. Inspired by holidaymakers on Kos complaining about refugees, the relentless title track demands, “How you going to sleep tonight?” If the scratchily anxious 2016 feels like a very personal stress reaction, she hits the wider targets with Out The Way: “Where would you have me go?/I’m second generation don’t you know?” Shah and collaborator Ben Hillier are still crossing metaphorical paths with P.J. Harvey and John Parish, confident in their precarious balancing of guitars and saxophone, noise and air. Even so, her tense phrasing often buckles and bows to fit these songs’ tight interlocking spaces: Holiday Destination needs to be uncomfortable and it is, a beautifully realised disturbance of any remaining peace.