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Q Review
Rum old lot, The
Beautiful South. Prematurely middle-aged, musically
middle-of-the-road and, beneath it all, that dark undertow where
life seems to have been reduced to a cosmic joke with a particularly
lousy punchline. Not an obvious recipe for success when it comes to
selling lots of records but, of course, they do; millions of the
buggers in the case of their Carry On Up The Charts: The Best Of in
1994. Maybe pop music doesn't have to be aspirational or celebratory
or escapist after all. Sometimes a certain rueful tunefulness will
do just as well. That and the comfort of knowing that other people
are leaking inside just as badly. Quench is the band's seventh
outing and, in shape and tone, it differs little from what has gone
before. It comprises 13 more songs from the collective pen of Paul
Heaton and Dave Rotheray that are jaunty on top, jaundiced
underneath. Even by their own standards, the opening How Long's A
Tear Take To Dry? is positively bouncy. Driven by a slide guitar,
funky electric piano and a somewhat tentative flute it deals with
one of their favourite topics: the domestic dust-up. Men and women
just weren't made to get along, it seems. "The flowers smell
sweeter, the closer you are to the grave," goes the chorus.
Which is nice. What else? Well, there's The Lure Of The Sea (about
suicide), Big Coin (wretched Mammon), Perfect 10 (more sexual
politics) and plenty of stuff about the demon drink. Losing Things
has a Latin lilt to it and Dumb is a simple love song with a touch
of the doo wops. There's neither room nor need for any virtuoso
instrumental set-pieces, it's all in the words. As for the tunes,
they just kind of shuffle along behind. The Slide, though, does
rather more than that, mixing strings, a hint of gospel and Heaton's
most persuasive vocal performance. The quietly desolate Your Father
& I rounds it all off leaving a suitably bitter aftertaste;
pretty all the same and a sitar too. Nothing to get too excited
about, then, just another Beautiful South record. But Quench is
still comforting in that uniquely discomforting way of theirs. After
all, when it comes right down to it, what is there really to
celebrate? Time for another drink, probably.*** (3 STARS)
Peter Kane
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