E-Mail This Article to a Friend Main attraction Holly Golightly does as she pleases BY MIKE MILIARD

Yes, it’s her real name. Holly Golightly (who plays the Middle East on Saturday, October 18) was indeed named after the tiara-bedecked butterfly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But birth names seldom end up being so ironic. Although Truman Capote’s character is frilly and froufrou and pretty in pink, the genuine article is blue (both senses of the word), a sultry, slinky siren who’d sooner pour a drink in your lap than fix you a spot of tea. True, the lithe Londoner does offer a cuppa to Jack White at the end of the musical ménage à trois "It’s True That We Love One Another" that closes the White Stripes’ Elephant (V2). But that’s just because she loves him like a little brother.

Things ain’t so sweet for some of the male malefactors that populate her latest LP, Truly She Is None Other (Damaged Goods). Golightly’s boots are made for walking, and on deliciously efficacious put-downs like "You Have Yet To Win" and "Walk a Mile," she shows who’s boss with a self-possession that might surprise those who only remember her early-’90s beginnings in Thee Headcoatees, the Trogg-stomping ladies’ auxiliary to three-chord titans Thee Headcoats. The latter group’s garage-rock godhead Billy Childish hardly qualifies as a Svengali, but they were his songs the ladies were singing, and it was his vision that molded their image.

Speaking from a tour stop in San Francisco, Golightly confesses that striking out on her own in ’95 "felt a bit funny, not having four other people to hide behind." But she’s long since gotten over it. "I do as I please, really. I’m self-assured because I believe in what I do. I would like it whether I was doing it or someone else was doing it. That’s the best thing you can say about yourself if you play music."

Just as Billy Childish is renowned for his insane prolificacy — a full discography of his countless guises is all but impossible, but it’s certainly in the hundreds — Golightly is no slouch either. In eight years she’s churned out innumerable singles and EPs, 10 full-length albums, and a handful of collaborations with the likes of Childish, Dan Melchior, and guest spots with Mudhoney and the White Stripes.

"We like to get stuff done," she says. "We’re quite businesslike in our approach. We move on very quickly from one thing to another. Once it’s done, it’s done. And then it makes room for something else."

It’s hard to name a Brit this steeped in American roots music since the daze of Mick & Keef. Honk-tonk and hot-buttered soul, country blues and rhythm & blues, garage rock, and girl-group harmonies — Golightly flits among them naturally and authentically, always ingenuous. It’s all enveloped in warm, Spectral production, with reverb echoing her reedy come-ons and acerbic barbs in just the right places.

But for all her fixation on American musical idioms, Golightly has a veddy English way about her. (Fun fact: she moonlighted for a spell as the equestrian correspondent for BBC Radio London.) The push and pull between the two sides of the Atlantic make for sound all her own — even on covers, like Jessie Mae Robinson’s "Black Night," which was written by a woman but has heretofore never been recorded by one.

"I just do what I like," she says. "It’s me, and I don’t really sound like anyone else." The White Stripes cameo has certainly raised Golightly’s stock. She says there’s been an uptick in attendance at her shows, and she hopes that "ultimately I’ll find that it helped out with sales, even if it’s just out of curiosity."

The curious would be well advised to sate their curiosity. Truly. . . is Golightly’s best record yet — and that’s saying a lot for an artist whose catalog has hewed, more or less, to the same stylistic path. "I’m not trying to break new ground," she says. "I choose the songs that I want to do, and record them the way I want to record them. It’s gonna be short songs, recorded with empathy for the thing if it’s a cover, and if it’s an original I have a very firm idea about what I want it to be like. I think that shines through. People aren’t likely to buy the next record and encounter a concept LP."

Holly Golightly plays Saturday, October 18, at the Middle East, 472 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square, Cambridge. Tickets are $9; call (617) 864-EAST.