Bethia Beadman has true talent... feral and elemental.
Chris Roberts, The Quietus
“If you play the Union Chapel it’s a good idea to fill it. Bethia Beadman did this twice, first with people (I won’t drop names) and then with her transcendental voice. Bethia ascends the stage in a silk pink Kimono, strokes of long dark hair (and little else) and then comes the voice, what a mix – from PJ Harvey to Cat Power to Judy Garland. Judy Garland?!? Random I know- but it works. Sometimes I wish she just did blues covers. But there would come the rub, as mesmeric a performer as she is, we would lose Bethia the author- the songwriter with a need to make songs of her own. Baroque compositions elevated the chapel, with reminiscence of Fairport Convention and Tim Buckley with a touch of Fantastical English foible. Complex arrangements veer far away from typical folk pop formulas, asking a little more of the audience, but offering a more potent experience.”
Dominic Rich, Louder than War
A cross between Cat Power, Nick Drake and Scott Walker.
Amanda Palmer
Live at the Union Chapel Nov ‘14 Photography – Denis O’Regan
‘Chinatown’ is released 3rd March ’15. Recorded with her band at Real World Studios in her native West Country and mixed in Los Angeles by Sam Bell, BB celebrates a once a decade UK heat wave that finds her London streets glowing like the desert of her longing – static electrics on the salt plains and heavy southern love numbers. Available here on limited edition deluxe vinyl and CD.
A child ballerina, ever in search of the ecstatic and transformative, Bethia read Theology and Sanskrit at Cambridge. She has sung in a choir at the Vatican, supported Pete Doherty, played Glastonbury numerous times, the Isle of Wight and the Festival of the Dark Mountain, toured to Albania and lived in Hollywood with Courtney Love while playing piano in Hole.
Bethia’s video ‘Fire’, an alchemical journey by LA artist Mason Jar, won Best Music Video at Cannes Independent Film Festival (2012) and the Gold Prize Award at Alameda, San Francisco. For her song ‘Glow Baby Glow’, Berlin art collective nowMomentnow filmed the moment when the underground grotto where she grew up was lovingly desecrated with an axe and chainsaw. Rolling Stone Magazine responded: “Glow Baby Glow shines home like a lantern.”
She has lived now for seven years in Homerton, in a roadside bedroom with a copper cowboy bath. No sooner would her velvet voice mend your night’s sleep than it would break raw your heart.
