“Magic” is simultaneously an overused epithet and a maddeningly indefinable quality; but, whatever it is, you’d have to say that the arrestingly individual Beth Jeans Houghton is the living embodiment. Still only 21 years old, the Newcastle-based “not bloody folk” singer-songwriter raised eyebrows and expectations alike with 2009’s beguiling Hot Toast Volume 1 EP, but her debut album is something else again. For all the rather facile talk of nu-folk, this is more neo-classical in places, given the formal prettiness of Houghton’s melodies and a string section industriously sawing and swooning away behind one truly fucking gorgeous siren song of a voice: milky rich and untethered.
Any kind of labelling still misses the point and rather undersells the multi-faceted allure of Houghton’s songs, with lyrics that refract a penetrating insight through a vividly-hued and synaesthetic worldview. The proudly roiling Bow Wow Wow strut of Atlas and the banner-waving Sweet Tooth Bird support the notion of Houghton as a “psychedelic Boudica”, but it’s the earthy ethereality of Night Swimmer and, best of all, The Barely Skinny Bone Tree – like a Wicker Man Cocteau Twins with its pizzicato strings and fingerpicked guitar – that will haunt you longest and most pleasurably.
