Review: Nadine Shah – Fast Food

A dark and sonorous domain is created with simple instrumental melodies and emotive vocals, full of reserved power and cool passion. Fast Food is an album whose concept is centered around a nameless yearning and swath of feelings, from gloomy to bold, rather than focusing on specific songs and stories alone. Remove the meaning in her utterances, and the combination of coldness and longing still wraps you in a brooding shroud of poetic soundscapes. Shah’s voice is deep and sonorous but without any huskiness, and it shreds through the mix of rolling drums and sparse guitar—clear, deep and cutting. “Fool” is cavernous and chagrined. “Divided” is downtempo and acoustic, matching its story about forced apathy. The array of sentiments is so wide that, at album close, I was an emotionally raw heap of human meat. Shah is a bundle of contradictions. –LeAundra Jeffs