Du Blonde - Lung Bread For Daddy

Beth Houghton - better known as her alter ego Du Blonde - was never going to follow a predetermined, twee, dreamy pop career. Her debut marked out animalistic territory and with her follow-up Lung Bread For Daddy, she shows that she has teeth.

Not afraid to get her hands dirty, Houghton self-produced the album, with her current label letting her loose to follow every artistic whim she wanted to be unencumbered. The result sounds like a broken heart bristling in a dirty motel by the side of the road somewhere. This is not moody, teenage music - it's a frank glimpse journey in a woman's world.

Full of grainy guitar, ‘Holiday Resort’ is almost upbeat in chords, but the guitar sits second to Houghton’s voice up close and low: “Spoke to my doctor he said I’ve passed my peak, all my eggs are dying, in my twenties I’m antique” - it’s the kind of honest female inner-monologue which we rarely get to hear in music even now. (Another line from this track sums up the album well: "Put on my shorts and tried to play the field, romance is a crop that modern culture cannot yield, so I hung up my dancing shoes and then I pulled up my shield")

There’s a soulful groove elsewhere on ‘Baby Talk’; while guitar lines buzz, eerie choral background vocals are mixed with a sultry swing in the main melody. Houghton wrestles with her desire on this track and others, including ‘Buddy’ where she admits that if “If I can’t be your girl, I can’t be your friends” over an uptempo power-chord pattern.

Houghton’s vocals dip lower still on ‘Heaven Knows’ but have an almost Kate Bush-like injection of ethereal melody for the chorus, all before a storm of guitars begin to brew. “I felt as though I didn’t exist, as if I didn’t have a place in the world” is a telling choice of sample to end the song on, giving us a greater glimpse into the mood being created.

Airly light by comparison, ‘Days Like These’ sees Houghton acknowledge love, the difficulties of it and how easily it can be thrown to the wind, but this is an outlier.

The best tracks on this album of enticingly odd imagery are ones where we simply get vocals and a moody guitar, with little or no drums. ‘Peach Meat’ is precisely that, an imagined scene of indulgence which is never laid out in a straightforward manner for the verses. Houghton’s strengths lie in her creative streaks, not taking the path best travelled, but grunging up her own dark misgivings and desires; these are vignettes into familiarly uncomfortable thoughts and moments.