The Beautiful Girls

so… how did you come up with the name?
“Where we grew up, anybody that played in a band played heavy music – either punk or hardcore or metal or whatever,” explains frontman Mat McHugh. “I wanted to pick a name that was the exact opposite of all that macho posturing and the associated tough-guy band names. And a beautiful girl was just about the sweetest, most appropriate opposite I could think of”.

the time between releases… Learn Yourself to We’re Already Gone
At the moment there’s a lot of Aussie bands giving the frequent flyer miles a nudge in an attempt to get their music heard outside of Australia. T.B.G. are among the frontrunners.
The group – McHugh, bassist Clay McDonald, drummer Mitch Connelly and the Brazilian harmonica player Felipe – have just completed their second album proper, We’re Already Gone.
In the eighteen months between the release of Learn Yourself and the recording of We’re Already Gone the band toured. Australia, Japan (twice) and the U.S.
They toured the U.S. four times.
They began by organizing a ‘flip’ tour with Mason Jennings. Immediately after that the band toured by themselves.
In ’05 they went on the road with Hawaiian/Cali band Pepper. And then with Slightly Stoopid and Fishbone.
It’s not the first time that McHugh has spent time in the U.S.

the motivations…
Sometime around 2001, the singer/song writer spent a year living abroad, including a six month stay in New York. He loved it. And at the time he was pretty sure the city held his future. The Beautiful Girls weren’t a reality at the time, in fact, they weren’t even an idea. McHugh was driven by a case of short term musical tunnel – vision. “I was fanatical, in that all I would listen to was old pre war blues guys – no bands at all,” he remembers. “The original idea was to go back to Australia and record some demos with a rhythm section then go back to New York.”
Of course, things don’t always go as we plan. But then, that’s a big part of the “beauty” inherent in this band. Those attempts at demos ended up birthing the group that exists today; a group that found themselves achieving almost instant success, and drawing favorable comparisons to the likes of Ben Harper, Jack Johnson and Nick Drake. These were all things the trio was pleased to hear.

influences…
TBG are a rare breed. They’re one of the few bands that have had the opportunity to play alongside a lot of artists and people, they love. The band have also had an organic growth and have been able to develop a sound of their own.
Early influences were varied. For McHugh, music is something that goes all the way back to his childhood; to the days before he lost his father at a tragically young age. “When I was a little kid, instead of watching T.V, my dad would put headphones on me and make me listen to his records and pick what instrument was doing what,” McHugh remembers fondly. “There were old jazz records, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and some Tijuana Brass – which he loved. Maybe it was just because I got to hang with my dad, but it meant the world to me. When he died I was determined to carry on with music, and one day have my own records out for someone else’s kids to listen to.”
“Ben Harper was a big influence early on, because he was one of the first guys recently to break through and not just be a rock act,” says McHugh. “Any music that has the emotional bases covered. I like that. There’s so much in music.”

major releases…
In ‘02 the band released Morning Sun, their mini-album. Periscopes the most buoyant song on the release was added to Triple J, the Australian national radio station. Around this time the band had that and other tunes added to a host of surf vids and dvd’s by upcoming surf filmmakers in Australia. And thus began the touring. At this stage it was Australia wide but a pattern was being set.
Good Times - ’03 - was released as a five track limited edition cd. Stock sold out in weeks and the art work and some of the songs appear on TBG’s Brazilian (The Beautiful Girls), and Japanese (Water), releases.
Learn Yourself, ’04, was a neat combination of roots, hip-hop, reggae, soul and blues. A mess of influences that formed celebration of life. That album (Learn Yourself), was the Beautiful Girls North American debut and on the back of it TBG went to the U.S. It features the radio favourites, Blackbird (the beginning of the bands fascination with reggae did well in Australia and Japan), Music and La Mar. Mason Jennings who toured with the band in the US and in Australia, made a guest appearance on Learn Yourself, featuring on “Freedom (part 2),” another one of the discs stand outs.
We’re Already Gone ‘05, expands expectation. In instrumentation, performance and songcraft. This album has a strong band emphasis and includes a stack of extra coloring. Keyboards, a brass section, melodica and harp solos move the album forward. And the rhythm sections time spent (nearly four years), on the road is evident. It swings.
Like its predecessors, We’re Already Gone is a raw album. Here room sound is dominant, the sound of a band playing together. It is also a collision of styles. It does occasionally dip into the same pool of influence as other material from TBG. That’s where the similarities end. The songs, for the most part, are darker – though there are still the trademark moments of melodic beauty (Let’s Take The Long Way and When I Had you With Me). Mostly it is a collision of structure and riff. A mix of art, dub and rock.

on music...
In all of the beautiful girls’ music there is an awareness. This consciousness acknowledges the power of music and all the elements involved. “I love hip-hop for its lyrics and groove.” explains McHugh. “I love blues for its desperation and soul, I love dub for its bass lines. I pretty much listen to a crazy range of music and it all seems natural and beautiful to me. Music has saved my life in a lot of ways. It’s too important to me to take lightly,”
“A lot of good sounding music is made for some pretty weird reasons, but I think you can tell when something isn’t made with heart and soul,” agrees McHugh. “Regardless of style or content, I think the main thing for me is passion and conviction. Without them it’s just sound”

For Further Information, Interviews or CDs, Please Contact:
Vermillion Media • www.vermillionmediagroup.com
Official Band Website • www.thebeautifulgirls.com