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Linsey Teggert talks to Beth Jeans Houghton about leaning into her unhinged side, collaborating with other artists and embracing musical freedom on her fourth record as Du Blonde
Image by Du Blonde
“A lot of people really hoped I’d fail,” states Beth Jeans Houghton, aka Du Blonde. “Now that’s all passed, I’m in a place where I can do anything, which is really thrilling.” Having entirely self-produced her previous album, 2021’s Homecoming, without any record label execs or industry bods breathing down her neck, Beth is now fully embracing freedom and fun on her triumphant new record, Sniff More Gritty.
Even the name itself is something a controlling record label likely wouldn’t have approved, though Beth laughs as she explains that ‘Gritty’ is not some new street drug but a reference to a note she made about a snort that is featured on the anthemic track TV Star when she mentions the money someone has blown on cocaine. “It was a really polite sniff, it had to sound dirtier!”
Sniff More Gritty, her fourth album recorded under the Du Blonde moniker, is bigger and hookier and more colourful than anything Beth has done before. It seems that she is genuinely having a blast as an artist now that she can truly express herself.
“I wanted to make the kind of record I wanted to listen to when I was a kid,” she explains. “I was obsessed with theatrical rock like Meatloaf, Dio and David Bowie, but also people like Shania Twain and Britney Spears. I was always drawn to the catchy, fun songs that made me feel something and also made me want to move. I heard someone talk about Britney’s songs once, and they said that if you stripped them back to just acoustic guitar, they’d still be amazing songs. I kept that in mind, and wanted to write songs that even if just played on an acoustic guitar, they’d still be catchy and not rely on all the other stuff, then I can add in all the fun elements afterwards.”
With this record, Beth has succeeded in doing exactly what she set out to do, with infectiously catchy grunge pop tracks that feature huge, hands-in-the air, sing-along choruses. Much like on Homecoming, which featured Garbage’s Shirley Manson and American songwriter Ezra Furman, she has brought some impressive collaborators along for the ride. The folk punk blast Solitary Individual features Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace, while Next Big Thing sees Skunk Anansie’s Skin take on some of those sing-along vocal harmonies.
a lot of people’s perceptions of me are really different to my perception of myself
“I just love collaborations in general. In hip-hop people have guests on tracks all the time, but it’s not really a thing you see so much in rock. They let me lose control of the songs, sometimes in a really interesting way. I like to see where a track will go with someone else.”
One track in particular, Radio Jesus, is elevated by its guest vocalists, who are none other than the North East’s very own Paul Smith (Maxïmo Park) and Ross Millard (The Futureheads), who the Newcastle-born Beth has known for many years. “They both have such good, strong voices, and they’ll probably hate to hear this, but their voices would work really well in a musical,” she laughs. “The song has that vibe – I don’t know if I’m digging my own grave here – but there are musical theatre elements in there, those big stadium elements. There was so much of that in a lot of the music I grew up with – 70s rock and bands like Queen and The Boomtown Rats. It’s the feeling of euphoria it creates, I explored that on All The Way from Homecoming, and I wanted to play on that more on this record.”
It’s not just sonically where Beth can now celebrate self-expression, but on a personal level too. You get the sense that she can now completely, unapologetically be herself, and she uses the tracks on Sniff More Gritty to explore the different facets of her personality, both past and present.
“I’ve got ADHD and I’m in the process of getting diagnosed with autism, and one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of people’s perceptions of me are really different to my perception of myself. I’ll find out in hindsight what someone thought about a situation involving me and I realise that I experienced it in a completely different way. There were a lot of situations when I was younger when I didn’t fit someone’s idea of who they wanted me to be, so I thought I had to change who I was. I know it was very serious at the time but now I can make fun of myself for going so far to change for someone else. In hindsight I’m like, ‘Oh they can just fuck right off.’”
As an incredibly aesthetic artist, one way Beth has been able to empower herself is to play with people’s perceptions of her in the visuals she presents, harnessing the more “unhinged” side of herself. “I had a couple of relationships with very gaslighty people, and it takes a lot to shake me, but it gets to a point where someone has scratched away at you for months or years and you finally snap and then they call you crazy. Looking back on it, yeah, I was fucking crazy in those moments, but why? What made me get to that point? I’ve been trying to analyse that part of myself through the years and I’ve found some pleasure in the music and visuals in really leaning into being that character those two people in particular painted me to be – missing teeth, wild hair, crazy eyes – almost embodying the character of what these people saw in me. It’s very cathartic.”
