Music: Du Blonde

Blondes have all the fun, right?

Throughout the history of rock’n’roll musicians have often had a substantial makeover, whilst in mid-career; The Beatles, David Bowie, umm Status Quo, er Mumford & Sons… Beth Jeans Houghton has gone one step further, and ditched her previous band name, for something new. Welcome, Du Blonde!
“When I was a kid, my idea of being a musician came from all these big characters – Bowie, Bolan, Beefheart,” she says. “I had this moment (at the V&A’s David Bowie Is… exhibition) in front of all these chapters of his life… all this stuff that was really important to me in the beginning, all of the creativity, emotional expulsion. I’d just lost all of that.”

Her debut album as Beth Jeans Houghton And The Hooves Of Destiny was a great record, a welding of psychedelic folk, soul, blues and psyche into something approaching contemporary chamber pop. It was also full of melody and inventive lyrical insights. But it was when the band were recording the follow up in Los Angeles that it all came to head for Houghton. “I couldn’t work out why I was having such trouble expressing myself with the music I was writing, but I then realised the instrumentation didn’t lend itself to the anger I was feeling.” So, the sessions were abandoned and the band broke up, an experience she likens to “divorcing five husbands.” After a period of suffering writer’s block and anxiety, a friend helped to unlock the creativity by pointing out that the second album wasn’t angry at all, whereas Beth was. Almost immediately, she set about writing again, and half the album was written in a day. Produced by Bad Seed Jim Sclavanus, ‘Welcome Back To Milk’ is a more aggressive, less whimsical affair than the debut album. It’s not necessarily better, or worse, just different.

For the most part though, Du Blonde marks a complete departure from her previous work and persona. New look, new name, new attitude. It also features Future Islands frontman Samuel T Herring. Upon witnessing Herring in concert she said: “I’m either going to work with him or marry him.” Two years later she got her wish. That, and the voice of her late grandfather on closing track ‘Isn’t It Wild’, shows that Beth Jeans Houghton aka Du Blonde remains a gifted writer, and one we should embrace whatever she calls herself.
Green Door Store, Wed 3 June, 7.30, £12/£10