In days gone by, if you’d asked Beth Jeans Houghton about her history she
might have told you she was born in the umbra of a solar eclipse, or that she
and her band The Hooves Of Destiny were raised by albino Transylvanian
wolves. Now, on the eve of the debut album, “Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose”,
she’s ready to get serious. Read More...
In days gone by, if you’d asked Beth Jeans Houghton about her history she
might have told you she was born in the umbra of a solar eclipse, or that she
and her band The Hooves Of Destiny were raised by albino Transylvanian
wolves. Now, on the eve of the debut album, “Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose”,
she’s ready to get serious.
Beth’s been prone to rambling flights of fancy in the past (and baffling
between-song stage banter to this day) but it’s only a small part of her
personality, as we’ll find out. “I’m a complete realist. I don’t like unicorns.”
In reality, this 21 year-old performer is one tough cookie. Her mantra? Never,
ever compromise. “My grandma always said, you can’t please everyone so
please yourself, and that’s what I do,” she says.
Beth Jeans Houghton was born in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1990. She wishes
she’d been born in 1956, making glam rock in her 20s, bowing out of the ‘80s
entirely to raise children, keeping her head down in the ‘90s and returning to
the music world in the 2000s, but that’s a different matter.
Born with the rare condition synaesthesia, she views letters, numbers,
words and even days of the week as a series of colours. It has other effects
too: “There’s a bridge near my house which, if I look at the red tar on a hot
Saturday, I can taste Safeway’s own brand ready salted crisps,” she says.
The condition has benefits – she can see songs in patterns and colours – but
it makes reading difficult, causing her to invent her own alphabet at the age of
eight.
Her first encounters with music came via her graphic designer mother’s vinyl
collection. “The first time I saw an LP I was fascinated by it because it was like
a huge, black CD,” she says. “I still don’t get how they work. It’s insane.” She
was listening to Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Frank Zappa at primary school.
Beth spent much of her childhood happily solo, listening to music and making
things, but not writing songs. “I never even thought about being a musician.
I mean, I like food, but I’m not going to be a chef. It was a kind of a surprise
when it happened.”
Beth and school didn’t get along. “I hate authority,” she states. She started
skipping classes at 14 and quit altogether at 15, returning only to do
her GCSEs. Around the same time, she took a chance buying a Fender
Stratocaster with £500 of money hard earned in a hairdresser’s, despite not
being able to play a note.
Her first gig was in December 2006, at Newcastle’s Head Of Steam. “I played
15 songs in 12 minutes, just rattling through them like a 33” played at 45,”
she remembers. Performing solo, just a girl and a guitar, this was a folksy
incarnation of Beth Jeans Houghton that doesn’t square with the transcendent
performer we see today. “For at least two or three years it pissed me off when
people said they liked my gigs because I knew it wasn’t how I wanted to do it.”
she says.
Being a solo performer saw her lumped in with “all these other girls with
guitars…” but the album shows the real Beth; it’s a thrilling ride through the
looking glass, full of coded lyrics and musical twists and turns. Beth’s said that
she wants her music to sound like she’s marching to war, and it frequently
does. Like a psychedelic Boudica, she’s carried into battle by The Hooves
Of Destiny, who are honoured by a hoof-print tattoo on her right wrist, a
tattoo which each of the band members has somewhere on their person. If
the sound has changed since those early days, one constant has been that
incredible voice: flute-like at times, operatic at others, and totally unique.
Pivotal moments in Beth’s career have happened by a mix of receiving and
making luck.
At 17, she attended Green man and was picked at random by Devendra
Banhart to perform during his set and was subsequently lifted onto stage to
perform ‘Milk Bottles’ in front of 10,000 people.
A year later, Houghton hooked up with Adem, who recorded her debut single
Golden/ NightSwimmer after emailing him asking for advice. She presented
a copy of her first EP to John Martyn just two weeks before he died. “I said,
Listen to it, please.” she says. “He had kind eyes…”
In 2009, the Hot Toast EP, recorded with Tunng’s Mike Lindsay, came via a
random meeting at a bar in London. “It’s just not as hard as people think it is
to meet these people you want to meet,” she shrugs.
When it came to recording the album, she hooked up with producer Ben
Hillier, known for his work with Elbow, Blur and Depeche Mode. “They’re
obviously good records, but they’re nothing like my music, and I almost didn’t
even go for a drink with him to talk about it because I was that stubborn,” she
says. “But he said he just wanted to have fun, see what happens, play around
with stuff, and that was my vibe – we became a great team”
The process was long and drawn out, beginning in 2008 and finally ready
for release in January 2012. For Beth, this was a problem: “I write so many
songs so quickly they were becoming irrelevant to me,” she says. “I’m getting
better though. It used to be two weeks before I’d get bored of a song; now
it’s a couple of months. I don’t know how bands can still play the same songs
40 years down the line. If it was me, I’d just tell people they should have
come to see me back then.” That being said, one of the songs on the album,
Veins, dates back to when Beth was just 16. It’s because of Hillier’s particular
knack: “He makes things sound the way they do in my head”, that the track
even made the record.
Beth isn’t so much a reluctant pop star as a furiously creative dervish. She’s
spoken about writing a novel. Now she’s talking about making a film. As
a teenager she dreamed of being a fashion designer, accounting for the
unique outfits she’s performed in over the years, including wigs, hot pants
and decorated bras. “It’s just what I wear,” says the singer, today dressed in a
relatively sober cardigan, white fur overcoat and huge, furry hat. “you dress up
as a kid and I guess I just never stopped.”
Mostly, Beth is dreaming of travel. A recent trip to Los Angeles became a kind
of pilgrimage. “I’ve always felt like I was constantly running from something,
but I realised it was because I hadn’t been to California yet, I knew no one but
somehow felt I was home” she says. She went on a road trip that included a
night in the Joshua Tree Inn, in the very room in which Gram Parsons died. “I
thought it might be ghoulish but it was really peaceful,” she says. “there was a
feeling about that room as soon as you walk in.” Footage from the trip makes
up the video for Dodecahedron.
So while her album’s not even released, Beth is planning her escape to her
own promised land. She’s not your average pop star – “I don’t think fame
does anyone any good,” she says – but she has made a brilliant album which,
like it or not, make fame a reality. “It’s not some insane record hat only five
guys in Germany are going to listen to,” she agrees. “Which is funny, because
that’s the kind of thing that Mute usually go for.”
Wherever she ends up, the good news is we won’t have to wait so long before
Beth makes the next one. “I’m terrified of dying before I do everything I want
to do,” she says, somewhat perversely given her age. “It’s a race against my
own time.”