Kate Nash - Hammersmith Apollo, London

It has been a great year for the 20 year old: a number one album, a BRIT Award and a rock star boyfriend. So for tonight’s opening act, Black Kids, it must be quite nerve racking, especially since they’ve never really toured before.

Not that you'd notice that unless you were told. The Florida five-piece are like a less irritating Operator Please or a more lethargic The Go! Team. Their shouty Cure-like indie-pop credentials are cemented during ‘Hit The Heartbrakes’, which opens with a little '80s riff before falling into a mash of strained dual-sex vocals and The Coral-esque squalled guitars.

Their latest single, ‘I’m Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You’ gives the Nash crowd an instantly accessible “Dance, Dance, Dance,” chorus that settles organically over a rush of gently stabbed lo-fi guitar and wailing synths, and it shouldn’t be too long before they parade on the same pedal stool as tonight’s headliner.

Allotting herself a mammoth one hour and fifteen minute on a dreary Monday night, initial fears suggest an uphill struggle for Kate Nash to hold the attention of the audience, especially as her hit-and miss debut ‘Made Of Bricks’ felt like climbing a mountain at times.

The freckled one makes things worse by exploding out of the blocks very quickly. She struggles to keep up vocally or catch her breath during her opener ‘Pumpkin Soup’ with the audience feeling her relief as the tracks thunders to an end.

“It’s great to be back home,” she tells the Hammersmith crowd once some oxygen reaches her lungs, “this is my biggest ever gig!” The shrills from the youngsters clarify this with ear-bleeding levels of screaming made popular by The Beatles.

Nash showcases some new material and she seems to have made a conscious effort to move away from the piano driven pop that made her so popular over the last twelve months. Instead, her guitar based tracks almost bring the set’s energy to a standstill as they waver dangerously close to 70’s Prog Rock. But fear not fans, as her spoken Cockney lyrics look likely to appear on her second album too.

Then the ‘girl-next-door’ picks the pace up again on another new track. Maybe she’s spent too much time perusing Ryan Jarman’s punk collection but the song sounds like an X-Ray Spex offshoot. Pogoing like an excitable school child Nash screams: “You don’t have to suck dick to succeed,” again and again and again. It is painful to watch, cringey to listen to and one wonders at what point her dad will jump up onto the stage to drag her down and slap her arse.

She re-emerges from her I’ve-had-too-many-bottles-of-fizzy-pop-and-I’ve-learned-a-new-swearword jaunt to salvage a little dignity with an excitable version of ‘Mariella’ and a deafening cut of ‘Foundations’. For her encore Black Kids join her onstage to play their latest single ‘I’m Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You’ (again), before she brings her tour to a close with a raucous ‘Merry Happy’ and a flurry of confetti that’s released from two cannons on the stage.

Tonight Nash seems to want to shake off the shackles of a pretty pop teenage icon, just as all those fathers want to shake off the conversation on the way home that begins: “Dad, what’s sucking dick?”