There are many ways to describe UK musical polymath Beth Jeans Houghton : - Rising anti-folk star (her debut LP, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose , is in stores this week via Mute.) - Leader of the eclectic backing band The Hooves of Destiny (not to mention sole female influence in a musical group comprised primarily of three dudes). - A person with synesthesia (she claims in her bio that "there's a bridge near my house which, if I look at the red tar on a hot Saturday, I can taste Safeway's own brand [...]
Presenting: Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves Of Destiny The folks at Mute Records commissioned Iain & Jane to create this short film portrait of their newest roster artist in anticipation of the debut Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose LP. God, I simply love Beth's weird folk style, the angelic vocal, the rich trembling. And wow, that accent! #swoon Pre-order the new record out after February 28th on vinyl here . Previously: " Dodecahedron "
Letter B is Beth Jeans Houghton 's latest project... Outside it feels like even a penguin would catch a chill, but inside the Garage the temperature is rising from the early arrivals to HMV's Next Big Thing gig at one of London's best-loved venues. Downstairs Reckless Love are no doubt giving the city's rock contingent a bloody good seeing to, but upstairs it's time for the indie fans to witness some of the finest new music on offer in 2012. Opening this Thursday night showcase are the London indie-folk [...]
Adam Ant , Josh T. Pearson , Inner City , Beth Jeans Houghton , Gilles Peterson and Scritti Politti are just some of the names added to The Apple Cart Festival bill this morning. As previously announced , The Line Of Best Fit will be hosting the second stage at this year's event; bringing some of our much loved acts to a multi-thousand capacity arena - however, we're keeping our lips firmly sealed about the line-up - for now.... For the uninitiated, The Apple Cart [...]
The first track on Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose sounds a bit like a fanfare at a rally where only good-looking people are allowed to attend. I'm sure that Mika would be gyrating and squawking spectacularly among the throng, which, to be honest, isn't something I'd like to spend my Sunday afternoon being part of. Humble Digs is the sound of Confederate State banjos coming to the North East of England (where Beth hails from). With such incongruity its effect is inevitably lacklustre in parts. Dodecahedron has been released as a lead single [...]
Facebook After writing up some bands lately whose names have either undersold or misrepresented the music they present, it's rather refreshing to have an artist whose public identity promises exactly what they have to offer. And that artist is Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves Of Destiny . A grandiose name, to be sure, and one that's matched by the title of their just-released debut album Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose . There's no way that labels like those could herald anything less than grandiose [...]
Beth Jeans Houghton has a promising sound. It feels like a marriage between folk-country and a little recent Natalie Merchant thrown into it. All quirk aside, she is a singer-songwriter from Newcastle upon Tyne who plays "sweet and gentle folk music." Beth Jeans Houghton has been described by The Guardian as looking like "Gwen Stefani with a touch of Brody Dalle", with a sound that "is Vashti Bunyan crossed with Nico and Laura Marling" In early 2011 Beth Jeans Houghton signed to Mute Records who announced that they will be releasing her debut long player in early 2012. The [...]
( Monday Music's the one weekly blog where SOIWT abandons its London-only focus, and goes global ) photo by Rianna Cox * Dark Dark Dark - Daydreaming ( mp3 ) From Minneapolis, this is my favourite song in a very long time. Full of gorgeous nostalgia, it revolves around rueful, hearty piano chimes and Nona Marie Invie's voice, so rich and sorrowful that I want to write to every ex-girlfriend immediately, and ask if we can't [...]
Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose, the debut full-length from perfectly vivacious Geordie lass Beth Jeans Houghton ( & The Hooves of Destiny ) has been so impatiently awaited that to at long last be able to ferociously tear record from shrink-wrapped viscose must, for Houghton, be comparable to a childhood Christmas in which some inconceivably gargantuan Lego vessel is unfurled from gaudy wrapping paper. When our paths crossed and voices conversed back in September Beth Jeans was, visibly, deeply affected by the arrival of a clutch of Liliputt seven inches thus to clasp an LP for the [...]
Tipped by many in 2009, it has taken nearly four years for a debut album to surface from Newcastle-based Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves of Destiny. Will it be worth the wait? Only time will tell. If it comes close to this wonderful rendition of 'Sweet Tooth Bird' for The Lightship Session Series we'll be doing well. The song and [...]
Since the fated day when she picked up her guitar to write her first song, Beth Jeans Houghton and her band The Hooves of Destiny have thrown themselves between genres, knocking out a handful of commercial folk tunes before finally entering the studio to record their debut album. Given that it's taken five years to produce, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose might shock fans who aren't au fait with her recent change in direction. The album is more heightened and fraught than anything she's released previously, but its unprecedented style is definitely something to embrace. It's become normal [...]
beth jeans houghton & the hooves of destiny - sweet tooth bird [with their debut album due for release next week, beth jeans houghton and the hooves of destiny offer up a fresh example of their idiosyncratic music (with trumpets and layered vocals all in tow!) these guys are definitely on the radar for 2012, so hopefully we'll be hearing alot more of them in the coming months!] http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wo ngiesMusicWorld
Nic Shonfeld From the outset, The Twilight Sad weren't shy about proudly pronouncing their influences. The publicity photos for their 2007 debut Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters may as well have featured the band staring intently at their footwear, so obviously indebted were the Glaswegians to the walls of guitar construction techniques laid down by their shoegazing forebears. But what set them apart was the songwriting blueprints they applied those lessons to, choosing to build giant monuments to miserablism from giant slabs of distortion, mortared together by James [...]
Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny recently performed 'Sweet Tooth Bird', their new single out in February, for the Lightship Session series filmed by famed artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. Normally I'd call these one-room affairs "intimate" because the bands are forced into a small space to perform, but this version really rocks out. Watch it below and see for yourself what I mean. This version is really energetic. Click here to view the embedded video.
Facebook On paper, London's Big Deal doesn't really bring a lot to the table. Two guitars - one acoustic, one electric - and two voices - one American male, one English female - and that's about it. There's not much in the way of virtuosity in the former and neither Kacey Underwood or Alice Costelloe's vocals would stop anyone in their tracks either alone or in harmony. To hear it described, you'd be forgiven for expecting it to lean towards being rather conventional and/or pedestrian. And yet their debut album [...]
Watch 'Sweet Tooth Bird' below. Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose is out soon. Click here to view the embedded video. MP3: Beth Jeans Houghton - Liliputt
IFRAME Embed for Youtube Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves Of Destiny will release the debut album, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose , on February 28TH. http://bjh.tumblr.com/
Facebook To promise that something is coming in "early 20123 may be sufficient detail when that date is still a ways off on the horizon, but at a certain point it will eventually actually be early 2012 - as it is now - and when that time arrives you'd best have a little more to offer. That first part of that scenario was most of 2011 for London's Clock Opera , who despite sounding more than ready for prime time when I first saw them last SXSW and reconfirmed at Iceland Airwaves [...]
This is my alternative list to the BBC's Sound Of', which always seems to me to feature artists who have pretty much broken already. That may sound pretentious of me, but I can assure you that's not my intention. I never forget the privileged position I have of hearing lots of great artists ahead of the curve. The price I pay tapping away at a keypad every evening & listening to every promo that hits the mat seems a small one, and I still get a real buzz from seeing & meeting emerging artists in small venues. This [...]
Before Christmas this blog, along with a whole host of other distinguished UK bloggers, ran an alternative to the BBC Sound of 2012 competition, the fifteen acts on the initial long-list are listed here , it's now time to share the top five: 5. Daughter Facebook A firm favourite of this very blog, Elena Tonra's Daughter combined sparse instrumentation, haunting vocals and an incredibly gifted song-writing talent to create two of the best [...]
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