Music > Album Reviews

Du Blonde - Welcome Back To Milk

27/04/15

I hate lazy comparisons but album opener Black Flag comes in EXACTLY like PJ Harvey’s Victory. This is no bad thing. It’s all heavy high energy and is a bold, exciting move from Beth Jeans Houghton who is clearly shaking off the shackles of her past and flexing every song writing muscle she has with new band Du Blonde. And it seems there were a lot of muscles aching to be worked. Tastes of The Sonics, the aforementioned PJ Harvey, RHCP and even Sparks pepper the record, with Chips To Go oddly sounding like something off Desert Sessions mashed with Be Your Own Pet. It’s kinda weird, I’m not going to lie. Musically it lurches with every track, not exactly creating a cohesive body of work (it’s track 8 and I feel like a whirling dervish). But screw convention and cohesion; every song is catchy as hell, full of big riffs and beauty. Trying to figure it out is surely part of the fun? I’d rather that than predictable, and with so many influences at play there’s also a sense of nostalgia that I’m finding impossible to resist.

Is it disjointed? On occasion, in that each track has a completely different vibe from its predecessor; delicious heavy bass here, show tune piano and full on ballad there, but the bold ‘big band’ sound captured by producer and Badseed Jim Sclavunos provides the glue.

Tender moments found in “After The Snow“ and “Four in the Morning“ won’t completely alienate fans of Houghton’s earlier work, but there’s an aggression and confidence here that marks a welcome shift. Despite the variation in sound, each song seems to have a clear purpose: to stick one in the eye to the patriarchal industry folk that plagued Houghton’s earlier career. That is the uniting force here and it’s smashing.