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Nadine Shah: Filthy Underneath review – her most personal record yet


Musical and emotional growth go hand in hand as the Tynesider processes grief, rehab and recovery on her fine fifth album

Topless Mother details a sub par therapy experience with Shah’s usual unsparing eye; Twenty Things pays homage to her fellow-travellers to sobriety, some of whom did not make it. But Filthy Underneath feels like an intelligently calibrated vehicle in which musical and emotional progress is made, even as suffering laps at the running boards like flood water. But a heightened sense of rhythm pushes Shah along relentlessly, and her glacial, swooping melodies contain non-western inspirations such as Sufi singer Abida Parveen.

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Filthy Underneath

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Nadine Shah

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‘You don’t sweat the small stuff when you nearly die’: Nadine Shah on grief, rehab and getting her groove back