REVIEW: Beautiful South, Carry On Up The Charts (Go! U.K.)

- Tim Kennedy

The Beautiful South's Carry On Up The Charts has been the runaway UK success of the decade - and it has only been released since just before Christmas. This, despite the fact that their albums normally don't perform particularly strongly.

The reason is that the South's singles have insinuated themselves into the nation's consciousness and while they have all been respectable hits in their own right, everyone and his dog wants the compilation. The research has shown that just about every stratum of of the record buying public has shelled out for Carry On.

The title is somewhat ironic - Carry On refers to the series of smutty and hugely popular sixties/seventies films in which all the women were either fat overbearing matrons or pretty young sex-vixens and men behaved accordingly. The Beautiful South's stock in trade is debunking simplistic images of men and women.

The styles encompass country, soul and classic pop. Perhaps the best visualisation of the South is to imagine an English Jim Webb with a razor-sharp northern wit and not a little of Burt Bacharach's ability to craft a great melody. The remnants of the Housemartins are no leftovers, but a full course meal.

"Song For Whoever" compares favourably to classic ballads such as "Reach Out For Me" and "Walk On By" as does "Let Love Speak Up Itself" and "Prettiest Eyes", both also included here.

The Beautiful South have always had an eye for a surreal graphic and a startling video concept. The video for "A Little Time" with the devastated house and the two ex-lovers covered in feathers sulkily declaiming the song at each other was particularly excellent. Some of the sleeve artwork has verged on the gruesome. This album has an arty but somewhat neutral street scene.

Something about some of the songs here often recalls a half- forgotten jingle fom an advert or maybe a bit of bubblegum pop of yesteryear. The fragment that you heard as a child, hummed in the playground at morning break, comes sashaying back as the flute hook in "You Keep It All In". "Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)" is another which has this quality.

The effect of the lilting melodies added to the saccharine quality of the Jacqueline Abbott's and Briana Corrigan's voices is startlingly contrasted by the ironic twists within the lyrics. In "A Little Time" the woman snaps back "Funny how quick the milk turns sour, isn't it?"

The only cover, "Everybody's Talkin'" which of course was the theme for Midnight Cowboy is movingly performed, a perfect reference from a classic era of songwriting. This from a time when it was respectable for artists to perform another writer's songs, an era when top-selling pop acts could also garner artistic credibility.

"One Last Love Song" closes the collection, with its melody taken straight from traditional English-Irish balladry. The song ridicules the process of love song writing which is fitting in a way, for Heaton/Rotheray are masters of both the love song and of the acid putdown. The final line is like a curse on all their works "Let it die, let it die, let it die".

The lyric-writing on the original works approaches Elvis Costello at his acidic best circa Imperial Bedrooms. However the Beautiful South, unlike Elvis, elect to stay in the bedroom. One of the few songs to deal with anything other than love- "My Book", has as its subject a parody of expectations and of (lack of) self-worth. Even then the final rejoinder (parodying Soul 2 Soul) is "Back to bed, back to reality". The song itself has a pacey jazzy feel to it. "36D", the other non-romantic track is a fairly savage attack on the sexual exploitation of women which also manages to (almost) rock. Perhaps some of the better lyrical tracks have not been included here, but the best tunes certainly have.

After the huge success of this compilation in Britain, there is revived interest in a States-side issue of The Beautiful South.

It took a compilation to install the South as giants in commercial terms. For once, it was with no hype and publicity, just the happy sound of ordinary people tapping their feet to some great songs which actually relate to their (love) lives.