[ May 10, 1999 ]
NME: London Wembley Arena
NME
London Wembley Arena
May 10 + 11, 1999
There's laid-back and then there's The Beautiful South. Paul Heaton takes the opportunity of Jacqui Abbott's solo vocal on 'Rotterdam' to casually wander offstage. He emerges from the dressing rooms five minutes later.
"Wanna know the football score?" he teases the audience. "Well, tough shit."
Of course, from some indie cool cat this could seem like the sort of casual insouciance that lies at the heart of all great rock'n'roll, but coming from Heaton - a man who clearly now thinks effort is a four-letter word - it's almost an insult.
For tonight The Beautiful South seem keen to give their critics enough ammunition to bury them for good. They look bored, perform indifferently and neither Heaton, Abbott or Dave Rotheray ever raise a sufficient sweat to have to remove their anoraks despite the sweltering heat.
"Am I cold?" Heaton replies to a heckler. "Only emotionally."
And that's The Beautiful South's problem; they've long since worked out that simply going through the motions will satisfy the kind of uncritical audience that multimillion record sales tend to encourage. That this listlessness has settled into their songwriting is a more grave problem. Both last year's 'Quench' and its predecessor 'Blue Is The Colour' lacked any of the songwriting sparkle of Heaton's early work. Even in his less inspired moments like on 'Window Shopping For Blinds' or recent single 'How Long's A Tear Take To Dry', Heaton can still make most of his lyrical peers seem like monkeys with typewriters, but musically he has allowed The Beautiful South to become a bland marketing exercise masquerading as post-ironic pop.
A real shame it is too, because the occasional returns to former glories like the mighty 'Old Red Eyes Is Back' show just how much talent The Beautiful South have got going to waste.
All of which would seem to mark the final victory of their critics. The truth remains, however; it's not so much that The Beautiful South are rubbish - they just can't be arsed to be good any more.
Delores / Link to Here
|
