Over two decades ago, The Beautiful Girls were the soundtrack to salt-sprayed road trips, lazy Sunday afternoons and sun-soaked summers along the Aussie coast. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of their second studio album We’re Already Gone, and The Beautiful Girls have hit the road to celebrate. I had the pleasure of catching up with lead singer Mat McHugh mid-tour to delve into the impact of this record and it’s significance today.
You guys in the middle of touring right now, how’s that going?
Yeah, I think it’s just over halfway at the moment. So yeah, it’s been really good actually. It’s been a while, I kind of got used to not being on tour. So I just had to get my head back into it. But it’s been great. It’s been really good.
You’re playing with a six-piece band, what’s that dynamic like?
It’s, like, the greatest, we’ve been playing together for the longest time and all of this crew know each other so well. So it’s like getting the gang back together and hanging out, it’s been fun. But logistically on the road when you’ve got six people and trying to fly and run around and meet in the lobby at the right time, the more people you have it just gets exponentially more of a pain in the ass. But as far as playing on stage, it’s awesome. Something that I never realised back in the day when I was making these records is it’s so much more of a pain in the ass and it’s so much more expensive the more people you add. So we would have the opposite problem where an album would get made with horns and keys and then to try to take that on the road in America or Europe was- it just couldn’t happen, so we’d have to do approximations of the album, which is cool in its own way, but it’s not really the same. So to have the full band there and actually have the album played how it should be played is worth all that extra hassle and squeezing onto a stage.
The Beautiful Girls are celebrating two decades of We’re Already Gone. Looking back, what stands out to you most about the making of that record?
Well, I think for me, the overall thing apart from the minutiae of making the album is I’d never aspired to be a muso. I love music and I’ve played in school bands since I was six years old but I never thought or even desired a music career. I was studying art and design and a demo we did took off, someone got their hands on it, got on the radio and the whole thing blew up and it was crazy. It was a couple of years of madness and I guess our second record I just wanted to keep that momentum going and made a second record that was similar to the first, leaning into that whole style that was blowing up, you know, that acoustic roots thing. But then it got to a point where was only a couple of years in and the whole thing just began to feel like a bit of a cliche, there was thousands of people popping up doing the same thing, wearing the same clothes, playing the same guitars, and it just became horrible. I just wanted to do the complete opposite and just get away.
And so I remember the creation of this album, I was like, ‘well, this might be the end of it, and I’ll just go back to doing graphic design’. So I was just going to use this opportunity and the fact that people are listening to make the record that I want to make. I threw everything in there that I loved growing up. So dub music and hip-hop and buzzed-out guitars and just everything in the one record. If that was the last record, then my only goal was just to be proud to have done that and make it a singular thing. And yeah, that was the motivation.When we first went on the road with it, it wasn’t embraced with open arms, there was a bit of head-scratching from the people that had gravitated towards us because of the acoustic folk thing. And then it took a while, but the radio was playing it and critically it got well received.
Going back to it, it’s the only record that I’ve ever wanted to do beginning to end on a stage because I like the whole thing. And I do feel like it’s a really, really singular record. Nothing sounded like that record, and I feel like I can hear a lot of that record in bands that are doing well today, like Sticky Fingers or Ocean Alley or any of these guys that have taken that sound and run with it. That was like a blueprint for it.
On this tour, you’re playing the record front to back, how has it felt revisiting those songs?
If you have a catalogue that spans over a bunch of time and it was recorded when you were younger, some of the stuff you’re like, ‘oh, I don’t know if I feel authentic singing that anymore’. But this record, it was a rough record to make because it was coming out of a heartbreak too. It was the end of my first big serious relationship and it was a tumultuous time. All the lyrics are pretty meaningful to me and they’re pretty direct and honest, so I still believe they hold up and I feel that they’re really authentic and I still feel no problem singing them. And I like all the songs.
I really like all the songs actually, but the interesting part is usually when you’re creating a live show, you want to have a bit of an ebb and flow and play all the hits and have people engaged. But with a track listing that’s not necessarily what you’re trying to do. So when you play a record beginning to end, sometimes in the set there’s moments where it goes from an absolute roar to a whisper and back again. And those moments are hard to pull off live. But because we’re just doing the record in sequence, it just is what it is.
You’re playing some beautiful regional venues, what has the vibe been like each night on this tour, and what’s the demographic?
Well, from the start, the main thing with this band is we always did like more regional venues than city venues and they’ve always actually been better for us because we come from the beach. We grew up playing in little venues like that, we started playing in the skate park and jacking open the power grid and stuff. So that feels more at home than a fancy inner city venue, to be honest. But the crowds have been great.
You would think, because it’s an anniversary tour, that it’d just be everyone that was there 20 years ago, but there’s heaps of young crew, and everyone knows all the stuff and is really into the whole record, which is great. I think that’s just the crazy thing about music, right? Like if I listen to a Police record or a Zeppelin record or a Hendrix record or whatever, a record that was made 50 years ago, it’s still amazing. Not that I’m comparing our record to those, but the feeling that I get when I hear a record that’s made a long time ago, I’m still as amazed and if I could go and see that record, I would.
Music becomes timeless if it’s good enough. And so I think that this record holds up and it kind of translates across from the people that were there to new crew that have gone backwards through the sounds they might like now traced the roots of it.
After this tour, what’s next for you guys?
So I have a little studio at home and I just constantly make music and songs. I reckon I’ve probably done about 10 albums. I just haven’t released any because, I don’t know, like mentally I just was exhausted from sharing myself with the world for a long time. I thought I had a debt to kind of pay back to music and I wanted to get better at certain elements of music and I wanted to just make music like I used to when I was a kid. And I’ve been going through that kind of period, so I’m feeling like soon I want to make some music to share again.
I’m not sure whether I’ll put it out. I make all the records the same way, so I don’t know if I’ll put it out as the Beautiful Girls or under my own name. But this whole process of getting back out on tour and stuff has been really enjoyable. I’ve really liked it. So I kind of feel like maybe I’ll put some new music out and go and play that and we’ll see. People have been pretty kind out there and it seems like they wouldn’t be too bummed to hear new music.
With three dates left, can still catch The Beautiful Girls in Sydney, Cairns and Townsville on their We’re Already Gone 20th Anniversary Tour. Grab your tickets HERE
Images supplied by the artist
