Gig review: Beth Jeans Houghton

Published on Friday 7 May 2010 20:21

CAPTAINS REST, GLASGOW ***

THE promo posters for this show by quirky young Newcastle-Upon-Tyne singer-songwriter Beth Jeans Houghton – picturing her naked from the waist up, save for a peroxide wig and two large eyes painted over her nipples – promised a risqu proposition. But her music in fact derives from a fairly cosy place – the ramshackle folksome rattle of any number of members of the Fence Collective, mixed with a little trashy pop glam a la Patrick Wolf.

She's full of contradictions, and certainly didn't look like your average folk singer here: a shock of big blonde hair and kohl-heavy panda bear eyes, teetering atop a pair of towering heels in an oversized T-shirt, plucking a shiny electric guitar. Her four-piece all-male backing band, the Hooves of Destiny, were decked out like indie droogs, in matching pink shirts and black bowler hats, with single tear green drops printed on their cheeks.

Houghton's stuff is for the most part pleasant and – in the case of the winsome I Will Return, I Promise and her fine cover of Devendra Banhart's At the Hop – occasionally lovely.

But better than her songwriting is her voice: lissome, breathy and classically pretty, with echoes of Vashti Bunyan.

An exception to that rule is Golden – one of Houghton's earliest numbers, a gorgeous early single that's seen her tipped for big things. Originally recorded in a hushed acoustic style, it's since been skillfully re-tooled as a noisy full band number, suggesting a healthy desire to resist easy bracketing whatever the cost – if she keeps up with that attitude she's definitely on to a winner.