Interview: Nadine Shah

The last time Nadine Shah played the Edinburgh International Festival, life looked a little different. It was 2021 and we were all desperate to feel the energy of live music, with gigs having only just returned post-lockdown. That year, the EIF hosted their contemporary music programme in a purpose-built outdoor venue in Edinburgh Park, where the likes of Damon Albarn, Thundercat, Black Midi and Shah herself performed. We all sat separated in rows, confined to our seats with drinks ordered on an app and delivered by staff. It was bizarre, but finally, there was music.

“It was just really exciting,” Shah tells me over a Zoom call from her home. “But then the reality of it kicks in when you're onstage and there's so much distance between you and your audience. I think at the time, we were just so grateful to play, but it's definitely not one that sticks out as a show I loved playing. It's one that sticks out in my memory as, ‘I'm glad we got to play, but I hope we never have to play one like that again.'”

In three years, much has changed in the world, as it has in Shah’s life. She might be returning to the same festival this August but she returns with a wholly new perspective and experiences that have fundamentally changed her for the better, and which led to the birth of her fifth studio album.

“Out of all of them, it's the most personal one,” Shah says of Filthy Underneath. “It doesn't really hold back at all. It was born out of a time where I just was very, very unwell – my mental health was at a real low. And then during a time of recovery, I started to write again. It took two and a half months away at a rehabilitation facility. I was suffering post traumatic stress disorder, addiction issues, and I went there to get better and heal. I still feel very privileged and very lucky to have been able to have gone to a place like that, to start my journey of getting better.”

A raw, adventurous and ultimately beautiful record, Filthy Underneath documents Shah’s recovery following a period of immense turbulence that led to an attempt to take her own life. It’s a record that is produced with an expansiveness that gives way to Shah’s captivating vocals, ensuring that her voice has the room to properly soar, both as an instrument and as a vehicle for narration. She began writing while in rehab, where she had the time and space to be able to channel what she was feeling into something freeing. “Some of the songs started as diary entries in a kind of cathartic way. I was writing them and I thought well, these will never end up as songs. But of course, they always do in my world.” 

Shah admits that the subjects on the album can be harrowing and macabre, which may be triggering for some listeners, but it was important for her to be honest and to speak her truth. “I wouldn't have been able to write the album, if I wasn't making myself get better,” she explains. “So I definitely don't want to be an advocate for the myth of the tortured artist. I really want to dispel that myth, because I truly believe that I've made my best work in sobriety and when I was in a healthier headspace.” 

Though the album can be a tough listen lyrically, Shah notes that she “didn't want it sonically to be downtrodden. I really wanted it to be uplifting.” The lead single ‘Topless Mother’, for example, is an infectious, percussive anthem, which felt like the perfect way to return. “It just felt like a joyous one to come back with,” she says, “and it was very different from anything else that I had released before.

“I think mainly because people were very aware of this horrible period of time that I had been through, I wanted to come back with a song that was very celebratory and daft and kind of joyous. It was really important for me to do that.”

It’s rare to come across an artist that simultaneously exudes as much defiance and charisma as they do kindness. But Shah has always been a bit of a rarity in the music industry. The Tyneside songwriter’s music has often been categorised as urgent and visceral, with frank discussions on racism, Islamophobia, the absurdity of politics, grief, mental health and more, all soundtracked by her venom-fuelled post-punk. But on stage and off, she’s funny and thoughtful, forever speaking out against injustices she sees but never taking herself too seriously or worrying what others think.

Case in point; when I ask her what she wants people to feel after listening to Filthy Underneath, she replies with a wry smile, “Sexy and very very horny,” echoing some of the humour that floats beneath the album’s hypnotic soundscape. “I think there was more of an element of playing on this album, as in like, allowing yourself to play like a child,” she continues, “just messing about and not concerning myself with the audience anymore. Not worrying about critics, not worrying what my friends and all the cool bands were gonna think. I wrote it for myself, I didn't write it for anybody else.”

Having now toured the album and played to audiences up and down the country, including as support for Young Fathers and Depeche Mode, Shah is able to reflect on how her relationship to those songs has evolved. “I am noticing in the audience, people are dancing, and there's nothing weird about that – I'm also dancing. If I wasn't in a good place, I wouldn't be on a stage performing these songs. But there's something really beautiful about being able to perform them live. And it's the most fun I've ever had.”