Beth Jeans Houghton’s outlandish sensibilities often lingered longer than the melodies on her psychefolk debut Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose. It’s been three years, one scrapped album and a life overhaul since its release, however, and the Newcastle singer has dumped her band, the Hooves of Destiny, and the avant-garde body paint, and is resurrected as the merkin-wearing Du Blonde – a more malevolent creature than her ethereal former self. The music is inventive and odd: Hunter is an unhinged X Factor Christmas single; grimy metal opera Chips to Go is a runaway bride drowning her sorrows in a Camden drinking hole. While metal and punk rip throughout (one track is even named Black Flag), sleaze oozes from its pores, too: “Knees up knees up mother brown, if you are legal, my boy is going down!” she sings on You Are Legal, as if at a steampunk swinger party. Du Blonde: here to stay? For the sake of our sons, let’s hope not.
