Beth Jeans Houghton, Brudenell Social Club, 23rd February 2012
Beth Jeans Houghton is a singer-songwriter hailing from Newcastle whose debut album of eccentric, askew, baroque pop (if you were to compare her to anyone it might be Bat For Lashes) has been garnering hugely positive notices right across the music press, and on the evidence of this show it is richly deserved. Before she takes to the stage, the Brudenell yet again proves its commitment to developing local talent by inviting unsigned North Yorkshire singer Pip Mountjoy to open the show. Very much in the confessional acoustic singer-songwriter mould, Mountjoy’s powerful, bell-clear voice echoes around the venue as she performs a handful of elegant and emotive self-composed numbers. ‘Red’ is built around a circular, finger-picked guitar figure, ‘Somewhere In-Between’ is a strummed ballad of heartbreak with Mountjoy’s fragile vocal reflecting the lyric perfectly, whilst standout ‘Oslo’ has a pleasing canter and conviction to it, allied to a tumbling, wordy lyric that calls to mind ‘The Tallest Man On Earth’. Not pushing the envelope then but beautifully wrought stuff nonetheless.
Following Mountjoy are tour support, self-effacing Birmingham indie-folk five-piece Goodnight Lenin. For a band of their ilk the obvious touchstones would be the likes of Mumford and Sons and Noah and The Whale but instead Goodnight Lenin with their high pitched two-part vocal harmonies somehow contrive to sound uncannily like Simon and Garfunkel in their early seventies pomp. ‘Crook and the Creek’s’ musical backing has the galloping hoedown stomp of Mumford and Sons but the keening vocals place it closer to something off ‘Bookends’. However it is ‘Wenceslas Square’ that suggests they may have happened upon a lost notebook of unrecorded Paul Simon compositions given that it sounds like the result of a union between ‘America’ and ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’. ‘Ode To Rebellion’, with its guitar wig-out and ‘Edward Colby’, which comes with a charmingly rambling introduction, see the band shake off their influences and forge a path towards a less derivative sound and they are all the better for it. Undoubtedly a talented bunch of musicians who have a facility for crafting classic melodies on tonight’s evidence, Goodnight Lenin have oodles of potential but they need to find their own voice.
After a brief pause Houghton, made up like a 1940s screen starlet, appears on stage, her slight frame boosted by a formidable pair of heels. She may be small in stature (an indie Kylie?) but decked out in a florid silk dressing gown she lacks for nothing when it comes to stage presence. Touring in support of her debut album, tonight’s hour long set is a beguiling mixture of beautiful, quasi-operatic indie arias and earthy between-song banter that belies the crystalline beauty of her falsetto vocals. Supported by her Hooves of Destiny backing band, complete with compulsory membership tattoos, she performs the bulk of ‘Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose’. Whether it is the shuffling, violin-inflected hymnal ‘Liliputt’, the bouncy, trumpet driven ‘Sweet Tooth Bird’, the banjo country-tinged skiffle of ‘I Will Return, I Promise’ or the scuzzy, crashing punk of the coda to album closer ‘Carousel’ it is never less than utterly bewitching. The set highlight though is ‘Humble Digs’, a song with a chorus so soaring and emotive you believe it might just possess the power of reanimation. However, the true measure of Houghton’s talent arrives at the end of the set when, with the help of support band Goodnight Lenin, she transforms Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’ into a stirring, transcendent moment of communion. Halfway through the set a member of the audience implores her not to go to America and you can see his point: her chamber pop may be slightly too arch for some but she is nothing if not a unique, treasurable talent. It would be a travesty if she dumbed down her sound in an effort to become more palatable and saleable in the US.
Sam Monk (@smonk78)