Quirky and idiosyncratic may be over-used words to describe Beth Jeans Houghton, but it’s undeniable that she has always ploughed her own furrow, even more so now that she is spurred on by her full time band The Hooves Of Destiny. I’ve been giving their debut album some serious listening over the past couple of weeks and the concept of ‘hooves’ seems entirely in keeping with their music. The band themselves are straightforward enough to use “twisted feet and hooves” as lyrics in ‘Liliputt’, a song that I swear was giving me visions of thundering horses way before I deciphered those words.
Less gentle and whimsical than you might expect from her videos, there is a drumming insistence evident in large parts of their output whether it’s on the new record or on stage. ‘Harlequin’ for instance rollicks along with sea-shanty pace, while ‘Sweet Tooth Bird’ is in marching band territory with its brass infusions. After only one listen to the record, it had been well and truly embedded under my skin and I found myself looking forward to the gig at Eric’s.
For those that don’t know, this was an absolutely legendary punk club circa 1978, the British equivalent of CBGB’s. It’s in Liverpool’s Matthew Street, across the street from the dreadful tourist cheese-trap of the Cavern Club, and thank God Eric’s owners resisted the urge for the same sort of awful pastiche. In fact they’ve done an excellent job, even Ian Broudie approves apparently, stripped back charm, a stage you can see, and great sound.
Support was good tonight, courtesy of Goodnight Lenin. A big line-up on stage, fiddles, mandolins, the works. They apologised for the constant shuffles of who played what, but needn’t have done. It gave them time to tell little stories from the road, vignettes from the van as it were. The music was pleasant pop-folk, which I realise is damning with faint praise, so I’ll qualify and say it was uplifting and edgy enough to keep it away from any Mumford-esque doldrums.
And then via a nicely hyped up MC, onto the main event.
Last time I saw Beth, a couple of years ago, her band included someone playing drums on a suitcase. This time there were proper instruments all-round, although the band had bought into a certain off-beat charm, cat-face painted onto the drummer, stuck on ‘taches and what looked like a film costume left over from ‘A Clockwork Orange’. The stage was almost sagging under the weight of Beth’s false eye-lashes, and she was sporting a beehive that Amy would have been proud of. They opened with the the crash of ‘Atlas’, quickly followed up by the off kilter lilt of ‘Dodecahedron’. These, like most of the set, were off the album, the one exception being ‘Honeycomb’.
If Eric’s had put one foot slightly wrong, it was in setting the place out with cabaret style tables for the night, a good 10 feet back from the stage. The audience stayed all respectful until Beth asked who were the ‘fun people’, and exhorted them to come to the front, offering bribes of posters to help overcome shyness. There was hardly a rush but people did move up closer and you could feel the emotional atmosphere heat up.
Beth and the band were all charm, genuine warmth, and looked to be really enjoying it. Despite the album only being out a couple of days, and not yet even available for sale on the merch table, enough people were quietly singing the words back, always a good sign. There was a nicely planned finale, the Lenin boys coming back on stage to join in a crowd pleasing rendition of Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’. And then that nicely hyped MC scuppered that by insistently persuading them to do one more please. I do like it when encores are genuine. All of which meant that, in contradiction to the set list, they finished with the Gogol Bordello-esque ‘Prick AKA Sean’ which is a great rowdy way to close with everyone joining in the shouted chorus of “fuck off”.
Beth and the Hooves proved their charm by sticking around the merch table to flog tee shirts, sign anything that was put in front of them, and generally be available for a quick chat.
There might still be an air of village green about them, but it has enough of a cracked punk spirit to maintain interest – thoroughly recommended.
