Music: Nadine Shah

The singer-songwriter talks with Jeff Hemmings

With the release of her debut album in 2013, Love Your Dum And Mad, Nadine Shah first made her mark as a singer and songwriter of note, writing compelling, intense and honest lyrics, set to music that reminded many of Nick Cave. But it was her rich, deep and operatic voice that really got noticed, as well as her unusual Pakistani-Norwegian background, despite being brought up in South Tyneside…

“My family didn’t know I could sing, I thought I could. My Mum heard a CD, but didn’t know it was me! I wasn’t particularly attentive at school so I was encouraged to go into music, something that I could be passionate about and focus on. I ended up going to performing arts clubs – we put on musicals in the summer holidays – and then I had formal classical training, a little bit of opera, and then got into jazz music,” says Nadine in her Geordie tones. “Nina Simone was the one that really got me into proper music, her vocal style really connected with me; deep, androgynous, and interesting.”

The new album, Fast Food, like the debut, is also a collaboration with producer Ben Hillier. “I was going through a bunch of albums, listening to the songs and the production values, and his name kept cropping up. At the time I had no songs, just the one video clip of me on YouTube. Luckily, he quite liked it, and we started working together. There is no romantic story to it… but we got on very, very well. I intend to work with Ben until one of us croaks,” says Nadine.

“The first album took so long to make, deciding how it was going to sound, and by the time it came out it didn’t feel like a proper representation of where I was at that time musically. So, I was very aware this time that I wanted to make a coherent body of work, and in quite a short space of time, so that the lyrical themes were coherent. I went through an intense period of writing for a month or so, and then we made the album in a similar time-frame as well.”

Recorded largely live, with just the vocals recorded separately, the sound is more in a stripped back post-punk vein this time around – where PiL meets Siouxie Sioux via The Cure and Joy Division – although it’s definitely not retro, more of a modern take on that sound. And thematically, it revolves around relationships … “It’s a collection of portraits of people I love or have loved, a succession of really intense short-lived affairs.” Imaginary or otherwise? “Otherwise! I’m dreading my father reading these interviews …”

The Haunt, Fri 10 April, 7pm, £11.50. Nadine will also be performing at Resident Records in Brighton on 6 April.

Follow me: @latestjeff