Mysterious Pop CD

10 Oct 1998
Written by Neil McCormick

Courtesy of B. Gross

THE Beautiful South play a kind of updated easy listening music, but the three vocalists harmonise about disharmony, conjuring up jaunty images of drunkenness, despair and domestic strife against instrumentally uncluttered arrangements.

Perhaps this is supposed to be subversive, although I imagine a lot of their audience think of them as a comedy band. On songs such as Perfect 10, an upbeat paean to love among the extra large, they can indeed bring a smile to the face. But the relentless PC sentiments (husbands are regularly characterised as chauvinist bastards, women as stoic and long suffering and, hey, everybody, ugly people and tramps are human, too) can become overbearing.

Songwriters Paul Heaton and David Rotheray are not as clever as they think. The highlight of the album is The Slide, a pulsing drinking song that constructs a pointed analogy between the childhood terrors of the playground and an adult descent into the gutter, building into a soaring gospel epic.

But, elsewhere, Heaton ties himself up in knots with his unfathomable metaphors ("suicide's just the anarchist that kicks down modesty") and torturous similes.

When the Beautiful South summon up all their deadpan sincerity to deliver lines like "It don't take a telescope for you to love me," I wonder if anybody has any idea what they are going on about.