Lung Bread for Daddy

Houghton’s control is masterful, not just in translating her thoughts and confusion so pristinely into cracking tunes, but this record is testament to just how undersung she is as a musician.

While single ‘Angel’ uses the simplest, scrappiest riffs and Beth’s sonorous tones to make something more than the sum of its parts. Du Blonde continues to be one of UK guitar music’s best kept secrets.

"The doctor said I've passed my peak/All my eggs are dying/In my 20s I'm antique," she groans on Holiday resort. her Verve and wit protest otherwise. [Apr 2019, p.113]

Lung Bread For Daddy’s inauspicious genesis plunged Beth Jeans Houghton deep into an artistic quagmire, yet she has escaped with another outstanding record.

A clumsier artist might turn this self-excoriating streak into something brutally caustic, stripping back the layers until only rawness remains. Houghton resists that impulse on Lung Bread’s later songs, purging her past while leaving her strange, spiky magic intact.

Throughout Lung Bread For Daddy, Du Blonde sounds as if she is constantly on the verge of losing grip of her emotional and mental torment, but because she weaves her feelings and contemplates the woes of her life like someone three times her age, Du Blonde’s latest offering emits surprising clarity and winds up as her most refined work to date.

It's an album full of sadness, mediated by Houghton's sweet instrumentation and voice, heightened by a sense of solitude that permutes the entire record.

Her second LP as Du Blonde plays it two ways: first with unremarkable, lunging dynamics and fuzz-caked riffs, then in a leaner and more soulful style, wit nods to prog and '70s folk-pop songcraft. Tha latter is more convincing and a better fit for her great voice and brutally honest lyrics. [Mar 2019, p.27]