Beth Jeans Houghton – York (secret house concert) (October 2009)

Witnessing history

In a Blue-Peter-friendly, embroidered world of pop-friendly nu-folk, Beth Jeans Houghton stands out like a sore thumb. Not if her promo pictures are to be believed, of course, she’s a young, pretty colourful cutie and is being marketed as such to within an inch of her life. But tonight in York, it’s hard to match the big-eyed myspace ingénue with the smoky, prog-folk singer in front of us.

The eyes are still big; huge, curly-lashed, kohl-lined beasts, sparkling with jokes and occasionally looking into the distance with real 70s drug-addled heartbreak. Well as much drug-addled heartbreak as her 19 (19!!!) years can convey.

She’s here in a tiny dark York village at a house concert crammed in on her current tour. The tickets sold out in record time, say the organisers, mainly it seems because her currency has gone skyward in the last few months due to massive radio-play and Fans In The Right Places. So the well-off, liberals rammed into this generous detached York family home may or may not know what they’re witnessing.

If it’s anything like what I’m witnessing, it’s Proper Star Quality –Right Up Close. She’s here with her band The Hooves Of Destiny, comprising drummer (and sometime keyboardist) Dav Shiel, violinist and singer Findlay Euan Nimmo MacAskill and the tour-manager who, in Houghton’s words, “looks like Angelina Jolie –phwoargh” hastily replacing the bassist who’s ill. And it works. Boy does it work.

Houghton’s 20-foot-long legs are lengthened by sky-high heels and bonkers skeleton tights and her customised playsuit do nothing to discourage gawping. But the music soon takes our eyes off the legs and onto the band.

So much better than – but featuring songs from – the tight quirkiness of the recent EP Hot Toast, the set tonight is Fairport Convention-style prog-folk at its best. It’s occasionally chaotic, interspersed by Houghton’s screams of “Ohmygod. Yesterday, like…” and her insistence on “more reverb please” before every song, but that makes it all the more exciting, demonstrating the band’s easiness playing together and their close friendship. Houghton’s voice is Mary Hopkin and Sandy Denny-inspired and her lyrics are mad and inventive. The pre-war-looking MacAskill (with his, as my friend described, “moustache-hair commitment”) is the perfect straight-man to her manicness and their voices work brilliantly together, especially when he demonstrates his impressive falsetto. Despite this being a tiny intimate gig, loop pedals, drums and reverb are used in abundance and it still works. It all just works.

I can’t quite shake the feeling that one day I will be sitting in the corner dining out on the time I saw Beth Jeans Houghton in someone’s front room. I could have touched her. I should have touched her.

Hazel Davis