Interview: Beth Jeans Houghton, pop star

By Aidan Smith
Published on Tuesday 10 January 2012 00:00

IT’S A bitingly cold afternoon but at an outside table of her local coffee shop the first great new pop star of 2012 is whipping off her fake fur to conduct a guided tour of her tattoos.

“This is an albatross because I’m terrified of flying, also it’s my mum’s favourite bird,” says Beth Jeans Houghton. “And this… well, I was bored and Biro-ed it for a tattooist friend to copy. Mum calls it ‘second albatross, viewed from a distance.’

“Here’s the band logo, we’ve all got that,” adds Houghton, who brings her Hooves of Destiny to Scotland next month. “ ‘Mememto Mori’ I’ve always liked and same with albatrosses.” So where, I ask, is “You mama there’s you”, the words of encouragement of Devendra Banhart after he turned the spotlight on his audience at a 2008 festival and she got up and sang? “Ah,” she says pulling down a sleeve. “I’m getting that one covered up.”

Houghton – 21, blonde and kohl-eyed, like an early Ken Loach heroine – must be fed up answering questions about this. “It was a magical moment but the words don’t mean the same any more. I’m glad I carried them around for as long as I did but I don’t feel I need them now.”

In her native Newcastle today, she’s tired of talking about quite a few things, like her formative influences (Bowie, Bolan, Joni Mitchell) and any references to her being a “bloody folk” act. How can this be with her debut album not yet released? Well, as far back as 2009 BJH was a name to drop in a way that Barclay James Harvest never were.

Early singles definitely intrigued; as did her towering wigs and a fondness for painting surrealist eyes on her breasts. But then: nothing. And during the delay caused by an apparent rare outbreak of difficult first album syndrome, Florence Welch nicked her mantle as the new Kate Bush and even Bush roused herself.

Maybe in others this stroppiness would be tiresome but her impatience to get on with her career is understandable and it’s pleasing to meet a young performer who knows her own mind, isn’t full of gush and won’t play the promotional game (early press releases had her being raised in Transylvania by albino wolves on a diet of chewing tobacco and stuffed clams). And it’s doubly pleasing when the album, finally here and bearing the uncompromisingly strange title of Your Truly, Cellophane Nose, lives up to the promise. She is less folkie now, but still gratifyingly glam. “I wish I’d been around in 1972,” she sighs.

Acts this individual – who are also this psychedelic, and this much a fan of Frank Zappa too – can emerge from the studio blanded out. “I knew I wanted to record my album before getting a deal, almost as a fait accompli. Labels can change lyrics, add verses and suddenly they’re not your songs any more. I wasn’t having any of that.”

It comes as no surprise to learn that Houghton hated school, almost from the moment her teacher refused to believe she could see colours above letters. She suffers from synaesthesia, an involuntary merging of the senses. To her, music is visual, which might seem an advantage for songwriters, but she struggles to read. For B-e-t-h she sees grey-green-dark yellow-light yellow.

Maybe the long wait is also down to Houghton having fallen in love, possibly more than once. Of a reported romance with Anthony Kiedis, the 28-years-her-senior frontman of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, there’s a gasp and a giggle then a “No comment”, but she will admit to being smitten by Los Angeles. “Like everyone, I thought it was going to be big, unfriendly and false, but I’ve made friends there in a way I haven’t always been able to do here. Also, I’ve only ever seen one pair of fake boobs.”

She’s got her heart set on an LA life but for now home for this daughter of two graphic artists is the Geordie suburb of Heaton Park. Like many locals she was angry when Cheryl Cole slagged it off as drug-ravaged. “I know where she grew up and it isn’t so bad.” Houghton shares the flat above this funky caff with her trumpet player, while her rhythm section lives across the road.

On stage, she’s threatening to drop the tiger suits and other zany garb. This is another example of her stubbornness – a reluctance to be easily slotted into the box marked “kooky”. “I got fed up with reviews always going on about the costumes and the wigs,” she says. I reel off a few well-worked descriptions from her cuttings: “low-rent Lady Gaga”, “Dolly Parton after a lightning strike”, “makes Lily Savage look like a librarian”. Yawn, yawn. Maybe she thinks as much of rock journalists as Zappa ever did, which was hardly anything.

But, when you least expect it, she opens up. She’ll happily discuss going topless in a recent video (“It just seemed dead natural”), and equally cheerfully, her best-ever break-up with a boyfriend: “I didn’t go back – which is always a mistake – I just never spoke to him again so there were no feelings, good or bad. I think cheating, which is accepted too easily these days, is really awful and I’ve never woken up not knowing a guy’s name. I’ve only ever had relationships – is that normal? – but they require a lot of brain power from me and they’re really what my songs are about.”

There are plenty more where these ones came from. “I feel like I’ve been stagnating. The next two albums are already in my head.” Having missed her original time – 1972 – Houghton doesn’t intend to hang about any longer. «

Your Truly, Cellophane Nose (Mute) is released on 6 February. Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny play Glasgow’s Captain’s Rest on 17 February and St Andrews University the following night

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