“Pure rock swagger” – NME

“Laced with gnarled axes and the most grizzled bass licks this side of the ‘70s, Du Blonde employs maximum swagger to summon noise of epic proportions. it’s loud, it’s gorgeously petulant, and it proudly waves a devil-may-care attitude. As far as first forays go, they don’t arrive much more fully-formed or forceful.” – The Line Of Best Fit

Du Blonde is not a persona or a character, it’s 25 year old Beth Jeans Houghton ripping it up and starting again. ‘Welcome Back To Milk’ is the Newcastle-born and sometimes Californian based singer’s second album but her debut as Du Blonde and it’s a complete reinvention: new name, new look, new band, new attitude. Attitude is a key word.

It started at the V&A. Two years ago, in the cavernous final room of the ‘David Bowie Is…’ exhibition, Beth had an epiphany. “When I was a kid, my idea of being a musician came from all these big characters – Bowie, Bolan, Beefheart” she says. “I had this moment in front of all these chapters of his life: this is what I want to do and I haven’t done it for all of these years. All this stuff that was really important to me in the beginning, all of the creativity, emotional expulsion, I’d just lost all of that. It was such a sad moment, but also good – because you can’t change it unless you realise.” It was time for a revolution and to get back to what she’d always promised herself: to keep moving, keep changing, keep pushing art and sound and never be pinned down. Beth Jeans Houghton was dead and Du Blonde was born.

Where 2012’s debut ‘Yours Truly Cellophane Nose’ threw everything at a song, ‘Welcome Back To Milk’ strips everything back and is one massive release of pent up aggression, captured perfectly by producer and Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos. Heavy riffs, loud drums and vocal snarls contrast beautifully with more poignant balladry and tenderness that fans of Houghton’s previous work will recognise. Future Islands frontman Samuel T Herring also provides guest vocals on ‘My Mind Is On My Mind’.