Against the hubbub of an N1 street corner barely beneath the surface of
Pentonville Road, a startlingly balmy September eve unfurls. The furore
that greeted Tyneside's finest songstress Beth Jeans Houghton
when she inadvertently launched Dodecahedron into orbit about the
unassuming blogosphere was similarly clamourous to that clattering to
and fro between Angel and Kings Cross, the track providing a springboard
of sorts from which Houghton, along with musical cohorts The Hooves of
Destiny has bounced from celebrated festival showing, to European tour,
to The Lexington where she
tonight finds herself. She's first encountered propped up against its
walls, her flickering shadow cast by innumerable phosphorescent
headlights. Kitted out in Boxfresh Adidas, a tiger onesie (from Primark
no less it's later revealed), and a wry smirk, she reluctantly poses and
postures for an SLR-toting photographic purist, gnawing on a limb of
chicken all the while.
Recently signed to much lionised UK indie label Mute, Houghton seems suitably ferocious in her feral get-up as she sneers barbed words and occasional sighs when questioned, presumably for the umpteenth time, over quite where she got to these past twelve months. "Signing a record deal takes negotiating" and while illnesses to integral members of her troupe delayed the signing of dotted lines, it seems as though she'd drive a hard bargain, even behind tonight's particularly cuddly exterior. She acknowledges that an "element of compromise seeps in" when she finds herself working with anyone exterior to her own being, yet is also all too aware of the perils linked with "the only other option", that of self-releasing her record. "I would never have gone for a major label, or one that wouldn't have given me complete creative control" and in this respect, her union with Daniel Miller seems almost alarmingly ideal. While she may have changed her stripes somewhat since the days of the Hot Toast EP (an extended-play allegedly often still cited as if "still relevant to me and my world", and one branded as being "from ages ago"), her songwriting evolving into an altogether more progressive, perceptive and precious beast in her absence, her reasoning against siding with a major remains resolutely fierce: "if I'd signed with a major, I'd have had no creative control, they'd be putting my music out, making their own videos for it, and I would be branded as some fool in heels wearing something that I don't like." No £12.99 tiger suits on the major label rosters then.
Of course as with any enterprising entity, an element of commerciality has to creep into its framework, and Houghton affirms of her discographic home: "even though they're an independent label and they're constantly thinking about the artist and the music, they're still a company and therefore they're still wanting to make money to keep themselves afloat." At this exact moment two bulging tote bags are plonked down between Houghton and violinist Findlay Macaskill. They're adorned with Mute's distinct logo, and are brimming with 60 copies of forthcoming single Liliputt (out November 14th), each one concealed from view and grubby fingers in olive green sleeves coated in cellophane. She approves of the matte finish she's painstakingly picked out, a look of artistic gratification glittering across her face, teeth glaring from beneath a pair of auburn woolly ears. "I just want to put out the songs that I like for the reasons I agree with, irrespective of whether or not they'll be financially successful in the future, or necessarily even sell." Thus while it may be down to Erasure et al. to ensure the walls of Mute HQ remain continually plastered in Platinum, compromise may not come as easily to Houghton as she initially purports.
With the record having been finished around a year ago a whiff of resentment can be sensed on Houghton when faced with the task of having to play through a record that she's seemingly once, if not tonight, felt finished with. Drummer Dav Shiel confesses to the band having spent "a quiet autumn, and a quiet winter too", however she evidently wouldn't want her current life, and lifestyle, to be any different: "we're either writing songs, recording, or touring. You don't do one thing for a year, then go on holiday, then return to the exact same thing. Because I've got such a short attention span, I find that as soon as I'm getting tired of doing something, that's the time to move onto something else. My general mental state seems healthy enough." That said, I'm twice offered a job as her psychologist, first for suggesting that a wandering Liliputt 7" must have fallen into the right hands when it may well have merely fallen from the debris-laden table, and later for unravelling yet more positive thinking. "If the record had come out when I'd wanted it to, I would never have travelled to America and realised that I want to move there. Even though there's frustrations, I'm so happy with my life at this moment, and with our sound as a band. I'm really satisfied with where we are now, and I don't think I'd change anything. Wow, breakthrough..!"
Intriguingly, one such frustration is born of the unprecedented success lavished on Dodecahedron, her greatest hit of sorts thus far and indeed her only song available for digestion to be considered in any way contemporary. It's thrown away almost immediately during her spellbinding set that evening, demonstrating her desire to substantiate her claim that she has struggled to pick out dead cert singles from forthcoming LP Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose. Returning to Dodecahedron however, she staunchly avows that "it categorically wasn't meant to be a single", that "it just happened to get picked up by Radio 1 almost a month after it was released and suddenly everyone was branding it 'the first single from the album'. I would never have wanted it to be the first single: it was meant to be a blog track to whip up a bit of online interest for the first single proper. The reason I wanted it to be a blog track was because I didn't ever want it to be a single!"
Recently signed to much lionised UK indie label Mute, Houghton seems suitably ferocious in her feral get-up as she sneers barbed words and occasional sighs when questioned, presumably for the umpteenth time, over quite where she got to these past twelve months. "Signing a record deal takes negotiating" and while illnesses to integral members of her troupe delayed the signing of dotted lines, it seems as though she'd drive a hard bargain, even behind tonight's particularly cuddly exterior. She acknowledges that an "element of compromise seeps in" when she finds herself working with anyone exterior to her own being, yet is also all too aware of the perils linked with "the only other option", that of self-releasing her record. "I would never have gone for a major label, or one that wouldn't have given me complete creative control" and in this respect, her union with Daniel Miller seems almost alarmingly ideal. While she may have changed her stripes somewhat since the days of the Hot Toast EP (an extended-play allegedly often still cited as if "still relevant to me and my world", and one branded as being "from ages ago"), her songwriting evolving into an altogether more progressive, perceptive and precious beast in her absence, her reasoning against siding with a major remains resolutely fierce: "if I'd signed with a major, I'd have had no creative control, they'd be putting my music out, making their own videos for it, and I would be branded as some fool in heels wearing something that I don't like." No £12.99 tiger suits on the major label rosters then.
Of course as with any enterprising entity, an element of commerciality has to creep into its framework, and Houghton affirms of her discographic home: "even though they're an independent label and they're constantly thinking about the artist and the music, they're still a company and therefore they're still wanting to make money to keep themselves afloat." At this exact moment two bulging tote bags are plonked down between Houghton and violinist Findlay Macaskill. They're adorned with Mute's distinct logo, and are brimming with 60 copies of forthcoming single Liliputt (out November 14th), each one concealed from view and grubby fingers in olive green sleeves coated in cellophane. She approves of the matte finish she's painstakingly picked out, a look of artistic gratification glittering across her face, teeth glaring from beneath a pair of auburn woolly ears. "I just want to put out the songs that I like for the reasons I agree with, irrespective of whether or not they'll be financially successful in the future, or necessarily even sell." Thus while it may be down to Erasure et al. to ensure the walls of Mute HQ remain continually plastered in Platinum, compromise may not come as easily to Houghton as she initially purports.
With the record having been finished around a year ago a whiff of resentment can be sensed on Houghton when faced with the task of having to play through a record that she's seemingly once, if not tonight, felt finished with. Drummer Dav Shiel confesses to the band having spent "a quiet autumn, and a quiet winter too", however she evidently wouldn't want her current life, and lifestyle, to be any different: "we're either writing songs, recording, or touring. You don't do one thing for a year, then go on holiday, then return to the exact same thing. Because I've got such a short attention span, I find that as soon as I'm getting tired of doing something, that's the time to move onto something else. My general mental state seems healthy enough." That said, I'm twice offered a job as her psychologist, first for suggesting that a wandering Liliputt 7" must have fallen into the right hands when it may well have merely fallen from the debris-laden table, and later for unravelling yet more positive thinking. "If the record had come out when I'd wanted it to, I would never have travelled to America and realised that I want to move there. Even though there's frustrations, I'm so happy with my life at this moment, and with our sound as a band. I'm really satisfied with where we are now, and I don't think I'd change anything. Wow, breakthrough..!"
Intriguingly, one such frustration is born of the unprecedented success lavished on Dodecahedron, her greatest hit of sorts thus far and indeed her only song available for digestion to be considered in any way contemporary. It's thrown away almost immediately during her spellbinding set that evening, demonstrating her desire to substantiate her claim that she has struggled to pick out dead cert singles from forthcoming LP Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose. Returning to Dodecahedron however, she staunchly avows that "it categorically wasn't meant to be a single", that "it just happened to get picked up by Radio 1 almost a month after it was released and suddenly everyone was branding it 'the first single from the album'. I would never have wanted it to be the first single: it was meant to be a blog track to whip up a bit of online interest for the first single proper. The reason I wanted it to be a blog track was because I didn't ever want it to be a single!"
Beth Jeans Houghton - Dodecahedron by Mute UK
Recorded "half an hour after it was originally written", it's a truly
stunning composition that disguises her tender years: at just
twenty-one, she's already voyaged through a spectrum of emotions most
bands aren't exposed to until they find themselves dropped from a label
with nobody there waiting to pick them back up, and her delightfully
humble demeanour is commendable, as is her recognition of the integral
part her companions, The Hooves of Destiny, play in her existence in the
index of many a musical publication. She dishes out menthol filters and
has to roll Macaskill's cigarettes, all the while confirming that she's
"happy for it to be said" that more than a mere few female
singer-songwriters have crept out of the woodwork of late, tiptoeing
into the A-C of the Radio 1 playlist. That said, she's far from
contented with being lumped in with the lumber, so-called conflict
arising from her being just another line on a figurative Wikipedia page
documenting the legion of songstresses active in 2011, as well as "in
the sense that we're definitively not an "I", but a band. We're
desperately trying to get away from being branded solely as Beth Jeans
Houghton as we've been a band for four years, and basically it's not
fair. And it stifles any plans of going solo." The magical showing in a
typically sweltering Lexington that follows our roadside interview
illustrates just how intricately interwoven this band have become
musically, and ought to shelve such desires for the foreseeable. "It's
lazy journalism. I am a girl. Babe", this final word delivered in a
generic Northern twang thicker than most Yorkshire stews. "I see where
they're coming from, but it's not an excuse. They're obviously not
looking or listening hard enough."
Her verbal disdain for the media, quite theoretically following many a theory as to her absence over recent history, then unravels into a mild diatribe: "they copy each other a fair bit, just rewriting that which is already written. I can't imagine Laura Marling would want to be told that she sounds like us... Merely for the fact that we don't sound the same, of course! We don't share ideals, goals, or anything. We're just different." Her aversion to the contemporary obsession with packing every song, every band, every being up in a carefully labelled allegorical cardboard box for safekeeping and safeness of mind is precise and positive, Houghton elucidating that she'd savagely tear her way out of any pigeonholing, and if new material flitters from sound to sound as frenetically on record as it does live, such pinpointing will become as awkward as nailing a wasp to a wall. This evident passion boils over into profusely beneficial channels too: "I put the band under more pressure than anyone else does, but I wouldn't want it any other way as that'd suggest I didn't care. If I'd had it my way though the album would've been out a year ago. I'm looking forward to album two already, and touring more. There's only so much touring you can do for one record, and you can't embark on a second until you've toured the first. But it's not the end of the world: we wouldn't be playing songs as we are now, which I believe to be a much better way of playing them so there are benefits to it too", benefits exposed explicitly during nigh on an hour come ten.
Her verbal disdain for the media, quite theoretically following many a theory as to her absence over recent history, then unravels into a mild diatribe: "they copy each other a fair bit, just rewriting that which is already written. I can't imagine Laura Marling would want to be told that she sounds like us... Merely for the fact that we don't sound the same, of course! We don't share ideals, goals, or anything. We're just different." Her aversion to the contemporary obsession with packing every song, every band, every being up in a carefully labelled allegorical cardboard box for safekeeping and safeness of mind is precise and positive, Houghton elucidating that she'd savagely tear her way out of any pigeonholing, and if new material flitters from sound to sound as frenetically on record as it does live, such pinpointing will become as awkward as nailing a wasp to a wall. This evident passion boils over into profusely beneficial channels too: "I put the band under more pressure than anyone else does, but I wouldn't want it any other way as that'd suggest I didn't care. If I'd had it my way though the album would've been out a year ago. I'm looking forward to album two already, and touring more. There's only so much touring you can do for one record, and you can't embark on a second until you've toured the first. But it's not the end of the world: we wouldn't be playing songs as we are now, which I believe to be a much better way of playing them so there are benefits to it too", benefits exposed explicitly during nigh on an hour come ten.
Fifteen minutes into our exchange, Houghton becomes increasingly
restless as she twiddles with chicken bones on a ravaged plate as they
lie dejectedly on a mattress of couscous that's been barely tampered
with. "When it comes to the business side of things my attention span is
absolutely fine. It's just that even physically I don't like to be
stuck in the same place for too long." It's for this precise motive that
she finds "an attraction in moving to Los Angeles", an attraction that
cannot be similarly accredited to North, South, East, or West London:
"if I'm in England I want to be in Newcastle. For the longest time I
thought Newcastle was a bit crap, and then I went and saw the rest of
England!" Such condemnation of this country composed of pastures green
and dark satanic mills at least sets her apart from one particular female singer-songwriter to have recently picked up an unprecedented second Mercury Prize.
While Beth Jeans Houghton may harbour no desire to up sticks and
resurrect them in this southern city of shattered dreams, the oneiric is
conjured in the format of songs circa three minutes in length, and on
the evidence of the live show if she's any fantasies of a nomination in
the very competition in which PJ Harvey recently waltzed to victory,
dreams of dodecahedrons may well become realities of altogether more
abstract, jagged dimensions, primarily in the shape of a Mercury
statuette. Time will tell...
______________________________________________________________________
Author: Unknown.
Source: Dots & Dashes
Date: October, 2011
Original article: HERE
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