The new queen of MySpace

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Following in Lily Allen's footsteps: MySpace phenomenon Kate Nash

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• Critic's choice: best weekend gigs
• Album reviews

Perhaps it is a little early to be talking about the new Lily Allen - but with the old Lily Allen showing the strain after an exhausting year on the promotional treadmill, maybe she'd be happy to have the attention focused elsewhere.

Like Allen, Kate Nash is a spiky young female who's happy to share her music, and the details of her life, with her fast-growing fanbase on her blog. One of a new generation of accessible stars for whom there is no such thing as too much information, she has recently posted pictures of herself daft-dancing in a nightclub, standing in the lobby of a Travelodge and posing with an ostrich.

And she has already had a remarkable career leg up from the original MySpace star. She owes her recent major-label record deal to Allen, who last year made her a top "friend" on the networking site, despite not having met her. "I don't know how she found me. We're not mates," she tell me, "she must just enjoy talent spotting."

Soon after, the man who would become Nash's manager got in touch through the site, and record deal offers started flying her way.

Nash's piano-based songs are witty, often sweary dissections of modern relationships, based on her own experiences and delivered in a semi-spoken chirp that puts her somewhere close to the street poetry of Jamie T. Meanwhile, her party-dress fashion sense will soon make her as sick of comparisons to Allen as Allen is of being likened to Amy Winehouse.

If Allen's recent online outbursts suggest exhaustion - uploading pictures of herself crying and ranting-about Girls Aloud star Cheryl Cole - Nash still seems to be having fun, though she insists she would rather find her own niche than take over from a struggling peer.

"I don't think I'm exactly like anyone else, but the way the music industry has changed means there's definitely a trend for people building a following by themselves. I recorded my first songs on my computer, put them online and it all came from there."

Her rise has been rapid. Last year, the 19-year-old was working in River Island after a BTec in Theatre failed to open up a career.

"The job was making me unhappy, so I quit and booked a gig at the Trinity bar in Harrow for April 13 2006 - I remember making the flyers." Her debut single proper, Foundations (Fiction), is released next month, and she has a summer of festival performances lined up. No doubt she'll tell us all about them.

AN EARLY LISTEN TO ...

BON JOVI
Lost Highway (Mercury)
Bon Jovi's latest honour, playing the first ever gig at the new O2 arena on 24 June, might just turn into a hoedown. You might think the veteran rockers' country connection is negligible, but it's getting stronger.

Last year's single, Who Says You Can't Go Home, was the first song by a rock band to hit number one on America's country chart, and this 10th album, released 11 June, was recorded in Nashville. Country belter LeAnn Rimes pops up for a duet on Stranger, and the slide guitar of other tracks such as Whole Lot of Leaving and Seat Next to You are definitely more twang than bang.

However, most of Lost Highway still meets the usual fan expectations of big guitars and bigger choruses, and if the album's second half is a bit Jovi-bynumbers, tracks such as Summertime and We Got It Going On will provide all the arenashaking thrills required next month.

NEW ON THE NET

Feverish download sales indicate that Californian quartet Hellogoodbye are set to be one of 2007's biggest breakthrough acts, despite their unlikely decision to mix emo rock with Eurovision-style electronic pop and treated vocals that make the male singer sound like Cher. Their debut single, Here (In Your Arms), has already cracked the top 10 without a physical release, and the subtly-titled album Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! is due to make a similar splash on Monday.

A few more established acts are also returning to the fray this week: both Ryan Adams and The Go! Team have posted promising previews of new tracks on their MySpace pages. Adams has stopped messing about and returned to the lovelorn country of his earliest work on the lovely Sheryl Crow duet Two (www.myspace.com/ryanadams), while Brighton's Go! Team sound reassuringly as lively as ever on the cartoon breakdance funk of Grip Like a Vice (www.myspace.com/thegoteam).

Meanwhile, The Beastie Boys have gone instrumental again with the skeletal guitars and whistles of The Rat Cage, from next month's new album The Mix-Up, downloadable at www.stereogum.com/archives/005279.htm

FESTIVAL FOR TEENS TO CALL THEIR OWN

I feel like I'm 14 again. The coolest kid in school is having a party and I'm not invited. Neither are you, though, unless you're reading this while taking a break from GCSE revision. The Underage Festival in Victoria Park, set for August, is strictly for under-18s, recognising that the most exciting, and excitable, gig audience today comprises music-hungry teenagers who are too old for bouncy castles but too young for beer.

The person enforcing the unusual door policy is a 15-year-old himself, Sam Killcoyne from Peckham, who started his monthly Underage club night at the Elephant and Castle Coronet in response to the frustration of being refused entry to a Buzzcocks show when he was 14.

The first ever event played host to gothic nightmares the Horrors long before they made the cover of the NME, and since then the club has also featured acts as young as the attendees, such as rock band Poppy and the Jezebels. At the Hackney all-dayer, as well as high-charting older bands such as Boy Kill Boy, the Young Knives and Mystery Jets, there will be teenage rockabilly siblings Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, plus acts named XX Teens, the Teenagers, I Was a Cub Scout, and, most appropriately, Tiny Masters of Today.

It sounds good. Am I really not allowed in? "It's not like a secret club or anything, no one's checking ID," says Sam. "It's meant to be a jibe at venues that only let in adults but play music that's predominantly listened to by under-18s."

See you there then. "Sure. You can wait in the 'adults foyer' if you like. There'll be free copies of The Guardian and cups of tea."

Underage Festival, Victoria Park, E9, Friday 10 August (08700 600 100/08700 603 777).

 

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