Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose (wearsthetrousers)

This debut album from Newcastle’s Beth Jeans Houghton certainly feels like it’s been a long time coming. Houghton’s first EP emerged, together with endorsements from Devendra Banhart and Andy Votel, all the way back in 2008, and for a while it seemed like Houghton might be one of those artists who simply peaked too soon, destined to quietly become a half-forgotten name with just a handful of tunes to cherish. Her perseverance paid off, though, and just one listen to the enchanting procession of “Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose” makes clear precisely what a loss she would have been had the A&R crowd let her slip through their fingers.

From the audible intake of breath that Houghton takes before launching into the celebratory delight of ‘Sweet Tooth Bird’, through the sweet, never overdone or grating eccentricities with which it is peppered, the album’s overriding positivity shines through both lyrically (“We’ll keep some damn good company […] honest darlin’, I’ll be fine”) and musically. Houghton’s soaring vocal, clear and true as it is, contributes to the happy mix with an enviable range of expression that allows her total ownership of the songs in all their individuality and occasional oddness.

Most tracks have at least two reasonably different segment, starting out on one route and flipping in the middle before returning to the original melody, rhythm or instrumentation. ‘Humble Digs’, for example, brings pianos, martial drumming, banjos and a beguilingly intimate vocal and contemplative tune to the table, before spiralling mid-song into a series of breathy sounds that seem somehow both ghostly yet cheerful. Just as ‘Dodecahedron’ seems to be getting going it too veers off, but the segue is so heavenly and twinkly that the listener is happily carried along on the crest of its wave.

That these digressions enhance rather than detract from the songs is a measure of the proficiency and confidence of the song construction at play here. This is an album that is crammed full of delights, from ‘Atlas’ with its lovely central image of a couple “dissecting the atlas for places we’ve been,” to ‘Liliputt’ with its galloping pace and the glorious, cascading exuberance of the closing ‘Carousel’. Many of the songs tell fairytale stories cloaked in an enchanted style of folk music (‘The Barely Skinny Bone’, ‘Liliputt’, ‘Carousel’) but their more visceral moments (“Power marching through your vicious jugular” in ‘Franklin Benedict’ a particular standout) mitigate the risk of lapsing into irritatingly fey or cutesy terrain.

There aren’t many points of reference that can be applied to this music, and it’s certainly not of a kind that can be wrapped up neatly into any genre (although psychedelic fairytale pop is a fair approximation), but Houghton proves that being original in 2012 need not equate with being hard to love. “Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose”, as an album, is delightfully easy. Wearing its skilled songcraft lightly, it’s accessible, enjoyable and endlessly replayable. What more could you ask for?

______________________________________________________________________

Author: Jude Clarke

Source: wearsthetrousers

Date: March 7, 2012

Original article: HERE