IF you're looking for somebody with the same cross cultural songwriting appeal as Lennon McCartney, you won't be looking at Noel Gallagher, you'll be looking at Heaton/Rotheray. Yup, the songwriting team behind The Beautiful South have got the variety of fans, the amount of record sales and the strength of melody to stake an "all time great" claim to fame. The sheer width of their audience is astounding: something like one in every six British and Irish households have a copy of one of their albums, and they play the sort of music that defies the notion of "format" radio - this is the only band I know of who are played by both (spit) Gloria Hunniford and John Peel. That's an R for remarkable, I think.
But back to The Housemartins for a moment (the band who provided the nucleus for The Beautiful South). Like Everything But The Girl, they were from Hull and during the 1980s, with hits like Caravan Of Love, Build and Me And The Farmer, they carved out their own highly individual chart topping position. The Housemartins described themselves as "Christian Marxists", which stumped many an inane interviewer, and when they broke up - as all Christian Marxist pop bands do, I think you'll find - they left behind a glorious compilation album called Now That's What I Call Quite Good which is as good a place as any to start if you want to uncover the genealogy of The Beautiful South. And you should.
A string of great pop albums, filled with more radio friendly hits than you could shake a chart return form at, saw The Beautiful South's last album, a compilation called Carry On Up The Charts become one of the biggest selling albums of recent musical history. Songs like A Little Time, I'll Sail This Ship Alone and Song For Whoever propelled them into areas The Housemartins didn't know existed. Even when they lost one of their singers (the band have three lead vocalists), Brianna Corrigan, who's from Newry, along the way, they've found someone just as good singing in a garden (no, really) called Jacquie Abbot. Incidentally, Brianna left because of the overly "laddish" nature of Paul Heaton's lyrics, as on songs like 36D.
I'm not sure what she would make of the lyrics to the first song on the new Beautiful South album, Blue Is The Colour, which includes lyrics about "sweaty bollocks" and the chorus line "don't marry her, fuck me". The song is going to be the band's new single, oddly enough. The first single off the album was Rotterdam, which is about as infectious as they come, this side of a tropical disease.
Although it's nowhere near as poptastic as Carry On was, and will hopefully shake off some of their fair weather fans, Blue sees Rotheray and Heaton pulling melody lines out of their sleeves. Paul Heaton's lyrics, as you would expect from a man who has embraced Marxism, Christianity and Laddism, are interesting. Check out The Sound Of North America ("the lyrics of New York may have Frank Sinatra swinging, but the rhythm and movement were dead black men singing") or anything on the Tom Waitsesque Liars Bar. It's such a good album, we're giving 10 copies of it away free.
Just send in your name and address and a copy of this column on a postcard, saying "Can I have a free copy of the Beautiful South's new album please" to Beautiful South Offer, The Arts Department, The Irish Times, 10-16 D'Olier St, Dublin 2. Copies will be posted to the first 10 entries drawn at random from the hat. By the way, before their Point Depot gig in a few months' time, The Beautiful South are doing a low key show at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin on November 9th.
MORE free stuff: if you go along to Whelan's next Sunday night (8 p.m.) for The Floors album launch gig, you'll get a copy of their new album free with the admission price of £5. The Floors (aka Dave Donohue) used to be on Setanta but are now with Dead Elvis. The album is called Superbe and features the soon to be heavily rotated on RTE1 track, Jesus Lived Six Years Longer Than Kurt Cobain ... If not free, it's very cheap: American grindcore stormtroopers, Drop Dead play The Attic, Dublin on Tuesday night, admission a mere £2.50. The previous night they play the Duke Of York (a fine venue) in Belfast. How grindcore are Drop Dead? Try this: their 38 song LP clocks in at under 30 minutes.
