[ August 4, 1999 ]
CNN: Pretty on the Outside
CNN Interactive
Pretty on the outside
Beautiful South -- sardonic again
By Donna Freydkin
Reporting for CNN Interactive
August 4, 1999
(CNN) - Let's just say you're part of a band that, at home in England, has racked up a lot of Top 20 hits -- say 20 of them. In a decade, you've released seven albums, most critically and commercially victorious.
Your 1994 greatest-hits compilation astonished even your followers, spending weeks at the top of the British charts and selling three million copies. You've headlined London's Fleadh Festival and opened for R.E.M. You're rich. You're sort-of-famous. But outside home base, you're all but invisible.
To add insult to injury, your former bandmate happens to be global electronic dance king Norman Cook, better known as Fatboy Slim, mastermind of the 1998 album "You've Come a Long Way, Baby."
Bitter? Not even close, say members of The Beautiful South, the productive but nearly anonymous British outfit specializing in moody, stinging pop melodies.
"We didn't go out of our way to not be too visible," says bassist Sean Welch. "It just worked out that way. But we truly believe in promoting the band, not the people within it. "Paul (Heaton, lead singer) and Jacqui (Abbott) get recognized some when they go out. But the rest of us are invisible, really."
And that, says Welch, is exactly how the band likes it. Because somewhere between the much-publicized rivalry between British bands Oasis and Blur -- and the sudden solo ascent of former Take That singer Robbie Williams -- lies The Beautiful South, one of the most prolific and least-flashy names in England's music scene.
More of the same And The Beautiful South isn't holding its collective breath that its seventh release, "Quench," will suddenly transform it into a global pop sensation.
Released in Europe in 1998, the album is already a hit in England. Former bandmate Cook, "changing some bass lines," says Welch, "adding a few sounds and generally giving it a more contemporary sound.
"He livened up the album. But we always do the same thing, really," says Welch. "It's not very interesting. That's why the more sarcastic and unusual songs stand out to people. But basically, we don't know how to make 'un-tuneful' music."
That "same thing" consists largely of soaring melodies built around acerbic lyrics. Prime example is the single "Perfect 10," which deals with superficial attraction and relationships: "Cause we love our love / In different sizes / I love her body / Especially the lies / Time takes its toll / But not on the eyes."
The band will be introducing its album -- out in the United States since mid-July -- to American audiences during its current tour opening for the Barenaked Ladies.
"We hope the U.S. tour will introduce us to people who haven't heard of us," says Welch, "but we're not holding our breath that we'll really get a huge following. Mainly, we're just coming to take a nice vacation."
Fertile ground The Beautiful South formed from the ashes of the British pop band the Housemartins after it broke up in 1988. Cook moved into dance music.
A year later, singer Heaton and drummer Dave Hemingway teamed up with Welch on bass, drummer David Stead and guitarist David Rotheray to form The Beautiful South, a band specializing in lush vocal harmonies bolstered by jazzy arrangements. Vocalist Briana Corrigan rounded out the ensemble.
The band's 1989 debut single "Song For Whoever" peaked at No. 2 on the British charts and included the line "I love you from the bottom of my pencil case." The debut "Welcome to The Beautiful South" impressed both critics and record buyers and paved the way for a string of hit albums and singles -- 1994's "Miaow" (which introduced vocalist Abbott, who replaced outgoing Corrigan) and 1997's "Blue is the Colour."
The band has switched labels three times in the last two years and is now with Mercury. But members say the upheaval didn't affect the making of "Quench" in the least.
Circle of friends The Beautiful South has garnered a devoted following at home, thanks to the band's ability to cushion rancorous lyrics in rich harmonies. The band sang about alcoholism on "Old Red Eyes Is Back" and ridiculed overly dependant relationships on "We Are Each Other." Yet despite -- or maybe because of -- its low-key style (no bar-room brawls, bankruptcies or scandalous romantic entanglements for this bunch), the band hasn't made too much of a dent outside England.
Unless United States listeners have a particular penchant for British pop à la Oasis or Blur, they've probably never heard of The Beautiful South.
"We've given up hope about being famous in the States," says Welch. "It doesn't matter to us, at this point. We can get by without it. We just never really worked that hard to make it in the States and I guess that's why we don't have a big following over there."
By some counts published in the British press, one out of every seven Britons owns an album by The Beautiful South, including the massively popular 1994 greatest hits collection, "Carry on up the Charts." But even in Britain, these recording artists aren't household names or faces.
"We don't feel or act like a hot-selling band," says Welch. "We lead simple lifestyles -- no yachts or anything like that. We just don't feel much different."
They're just buddies, says Welch, who happen to enjoy making music together. The members keep each other grounded and try to nip any egoism in the bud. The original members of The Beautiful South have been together now for a decade.
"We enjoy playing music and being in each others' company. It's good fun," says Welch. "But the one thing we never discuss when we're together is the band itself or politics."
Delores / Link to Here
NYT: Caustic and Loose in a British Way
The New York Times
Caustic and Loose in a British Way,With Soul
August 4, 1999
By ANN POWERS
The noise from the crowd in the Supper Club was deafening on Monday night, but it's doubtful many American ears heard it. The occasion was a rare club show by the Beautiful South, a band that has amassed a British-born fan base over the course of seven albums yet remains as esoteric as a dish of bubble and squeak here.
The Beautiful South carries on the English tradition of remaking American soul to appeal to listeners far removed from the racial dynamics that created it. Bands from the Beatles to Culture Club linked soul's pathos to the sentimentality of the music hall, that British institution where old-fashioned entertainers plied their routines. David Rotheray, the guitarist who writes the Beautiful South's music, borrows heavily from Motown and the crossover pop of Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones.
At the Supper Club the seven-piece band was joined by three horn players and a percussionist. The group made a happy jumble of Rotheray's arrangements, not bothering to capture the polish of its studio recordings. The rhythm section -- Sean Welch on bass and David Stead on drums -- was quietly masterly, and the interplay between keyboards and horns enriched Rotheray's party tunes.
But the groove remained loose as the three singers, Paul Heaton, Dave Hemingway and Jacqueline Abbot, wiggled and swayed as if they were well into a Friday night at the pub. Heaton was particularly impish, affecting hip-hop dance moves that would get him barred from any self-respecting New York crew but that heightened his image as everybody's favorite lampshade wearer.
Heaton's smoothly caustic lyrics separate the Beautiful South from other English soul strivers. He writes the most unlikely hits, many of which had fans singing along delightedly on Monday. "36D" derides the intellectual emptiness of a pinup girl. "Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud)" scorns an ordinary bloke's senseless optimism. "Perfect 10," from the group's new album, "Quench" (Mercury), is an affectionate sparring session between Heaton and Ms. Abbot in which he declares his love for voluptuous women and she hints at her disappointment with diminutive (in the most private way) men.
Other songs deflate the very notion of artistic commercial music. "Song for Whoever" had the golden-voiced Hemingway taking the part of a hack writer who courts women only because they inspire him to write treacly verses. Seemingly everyone in the Supper Club joined in on the chorus, crooning, "Oh Cathy, oh Allison, oh Phillipa, oh Sue, you made me so much money, I wrote this song for you." It was an odd moment in which the mechanisms of pop were exposed to everyone's nonchalance.
The fatalism of Heaton's songs is fundamentally connected to their Englishness. While Americans admire rock that threatens to break through class barriers or sexual and racial taboos, the English often prefer songs that jauntily acknowledge life's unavoidable hierarchies.
The pathos of such admissions is bearable when mixed with humor. The romantic crises and personal disasters Heaton chronicles, couched in the context of a threadbare middle-to-lower class, recall the films of Mike Leigh or the novels of Roddy Doyle. Ms. Abbot's sensible and demure voice was particularly suited to these mini-dramas as she played foil to the boyish Hemingway and the reckless Heaton.
As one of the wittiest groups appealing to a mass audience today, the Beautiful South still has a shot at an American hit. It would probably be a novelty, though, like the one enjoyed last year by their Canadian friends, the Barenaked Ladies, for whom the band is opening on an East Coast summer tour (the bill is reversed when they play together in England). Americans can take this kind of sunny pessimism only as an odd joke. As for an American hit, to paraphrase a line of Heaton's, the Beautiful South will carry on regardless.
Delores / Link to Here
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