My L.A. RECORD compatriots cautioned me that Beth Jeans Houghton
“doesn’t need our help” to get her album promoted. But perhaps YOU, fair
reader, need encouragement to look past the U.K. gossip rags and
Houghton’s Gaga-esque costumery, and really engage with this album’s
songs. Do it! This carefully crafted yet free-soaring song assortment
combines folk with pop as well as Nick Drake ever did, and pairs twee
micro-orchestration with deceptively dark lyrics in a manner reminiscent
of Love’s Forever Changes—hell, to hit the point home, Houghton shoots a
bird out of a tree in the very first verse of the very first song,
mimicking “Live and Let Live” before “setting the scene” with angelic
trumpets, pianos and Floyd-esque midget helium voices. And this is just
her first song—each one that follows is a masterpiece of time changes,
swirling harpsichords and banjos, or perhaps a clunky waltz interrupted
by a Mad Hatter tea party, the constant thread being her gorgeous voice.
Oh, that voice! Though she’s capable of angelic flights and smart
multi-layered harmonies with herself or her Hooves, her preferred voice
is a womanly Mia Doi Todd alto, put to best use in the summery “Atlas,”
whose amateurish lyrics about dating an older guy are the album’s only
clue to Houghton’s barely-legal youth—though my favorite is “Veins,”
lyrically like PJ Harvey but evocative of an alternate world where
Christine McVie was the best part of Fleetwood Mac! Houghton’s next move
is probably to Los Angeles, to record a sophomore album with Neil
fucking Young—let’s hope she sticks around to show my fellow writers
what for. P.S. The CD has a hidden punk track?!?
______________________________________________________________________
Author: D.M. Collins
Source: L.A. Record
Date: May 14, 2012
Original article: HERE
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