Beth Jeans Houghton – Hot Toast Vol 1 (Static Caravan)

Here’s a real test of your kook tolerance levels. Beth Jeans Houghton (pronounced Howton if you believe the BBC: Radios 2 and 6 are giving her the big hype) could have jumped out of a Noel Fielding daydream – quirky, asymmetric, sequinned and Hoxton-fresh. In her biography she claims to have been raised by albino wolves on a diet of chewing tobacco and stuffed clams. Put all this behind you. Quickly. You need this in your life. The truth is she’s drifted down from the Newcastle folk scene, benevolently touched by a squillion approving and credible names.

Five songs are all we’re given. Thirteen and a bit minutes. Why do people make EPs these days? Did she run out of time? Anyway, they’re perfect. The first track and first single, I Will Return, I Promise is morningy and crisp and has a piano hook that could make an on-duty undertaker grin just to be alive. By the time we get to the last track, LilyPutt, hearts are warmed to an unseasonal degree and the scant seconds it takes for the car’s CD player to return to track one seem like an affront.

So. when I say quickly I mean now. Tunes this lovely and kook-honed will last about a nanosecond before they’re the soundtrack to a movie starring Josh Spangles or Zapp Braffington, that will be the toast of Sundance, and then hand-me-downed to ComaPhone for a hugely innovative set of synergising idents for something youthy on E4 that will have puffins in it.

Tiny. Adorable. Seducing. Get it while it’s still ours.

Stephen Taylor