The Many Faces Of... Beth Jeans Houghton & 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 very first time must have, I may presuppose, truly enlightened an already wonderfully enlivening character. Realistically, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose is hardly an effort to validate the long in long-player, its ten tracks scarcely clocking in at half an hour. However if it may dispel one abbreviation, it convincingly typifies one particular well-worn-to-the-point-of-threadbare phrase. For while it's unquestionably short (and, subjectively, saddeningly so), it's also unerringly sweet. Bugle-buffeted opener Sweet Tooth Bird is as buoyant as the most blustery whistle of wind, the symphonic sound of The Polyphonic Spree's horn section polished and spruced up to contribute exuberant fanfare to the Nyman-like orchestral whirring of the track, while Atlas proves ebulliently Wild Bestial with afrobeat guitars, hooting, howling, and the like offset by aboriginal chanting set several fathoms below paradoxically joyous lyrics of the detrimental nature of "red wine and whisky". Irrespective of the purported damage of said intoxicants, they've evidently had no impact on Houghton's vocal ability as she performs a variety of viva voce acrobatics. She coos; cackles; comforts as lines roly-poly helplessly on into those which follow as on the lightly jovial Humble Digs, during which soldierly snares and tumbledown banjos perpetuate a jaunty, chantey-ish effect. Night Swimmer (mercifully akin to R.E.M. dirge in name only) sees Houghton & her Hooves veer off in a somewhat kitsch baroque pop direction beneath which swims incongruous arpeggiation. She here demonstrates minimal progression, and consequently merely treads waters in which she's perhaps ill at ease. The eerie and ethereal, bemusingly entitled The ...
Dots & Dashes
6 February 2012