Mojo - The Music Magazine

MOJO's Chris Catchpole rounds up the Friday night fun at The Great Escape's MOJO stage.

DAY TWO AND WITH heads still smarting from the night before tonight's lineup is beginning to look particularly attractive, being on paper - if one were to indulge in such reductive labelling - the festival's 'folk' night.

So, local ale in hand, MOJO settles down for the musical equivalent of a hot toddy next to an open fire.

When Beth Jeans Houghton walks on, however, in a rough approximation of Charlotte Rampling's sadomachistic get up in The Night Porter, MOJO has to check our programme listings to make sure this is the same BJH who made the delicate, Joanna Newsom-esque song-waltzes we've spent the last fortnight listening to on myspace.

Just nineteen and it has to be said stunningly attractive, Houghton's dizzy between-song patter and visible nerves (false starts and forgotten song keys abound) are in stark contrast to her strident, assured vocals.

Eerily reminiscent of the magnificent Sandy Denny, Houghton and her two side men (bass player Rory used to star in teen drama Byker Grove, trivia fans) re-imagine her songs in a more breezy, traditional folk mould than the layered atmospherics she offers on record.

Not only do we witness the pleasing sight of a flightcase being used as a bass drum, but it is perhaps the first time MOJO has heard a performer ask "where's the bubble wrap?" from the stage.

Houghton is quite obviously a considerable talent, with a remarkable voice and a rare star quality - disappointingly, though, the bubble wrap remains unused.

Hailing from nearby Chichester but looking like they've swished off the set of Mad Men, cigarette in hand, Smoke Fairies are an altogether darker proposition. With their sultry, husky-voiced harmonising and mean slide-guitar playing, Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire trade in spectral, slow-burning blues. An air of sophistication hangs in the air throughout, momentarily shattered by Katherine's confession that she got drunk and pinched the drinks holder off a parked bicycle the night before.

Now, it may be hallmark of the laziest of journalism to describe an act as "like X playing Y" but Edinburgh's Broken Records really do sound like The Arcade Fire working their way through The Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues (which we actually mean as a compliment).

Lined up along the front of the stage and with every fibre of their collective being invested in each note, the sextet play like they really, really mean it.

Like Mike Scott did over a decade previously, Broken Records have taken an age-old musical form and invigorated it with an urgency, a freshness and a widescreen sense of grandeur that makes it both relevant and utterly thrilling.

It's an intense, emotionally charged experience that explains the buzz currently being generated by these fiddle- and accordion-wielding young men. Plus, the Celt-punk Good Reason rocks - day we say it - like The Pogues at their bone-rattling best. Bar a Bloody Mary and a brisk walk along the seafront, it's the best hangover cure in town.

Noah And The Whale frontman Charlie Fink shouldn't be allowed to fall in love. In fact, he should be forced to wear blinkers to prevent him even viewing members of the opposite sex. Since, if his songs are anything to go by, he seems incapable of even bumping into young ladies without falling hopelessly in love with objects of resolutely unrequited desire.

With a new album in the can, Fink has stripped down his collective to a more guitar-based four-piece, giving previously buoyant folk arrangements a more downbeat, lo-fi feel. Combined with Fink's low monotone it's not dissimilar to Bill Callahan's work with Smog.

Meanwhile, the success of his band's self-titled debut has done little to ease Fink's broken heart. And though that's bad news for Fink, it's good news for us. While his amorous misadventures make for such affecting, beautiful music, long may they continue...

Chris Catchpole