The Beautiful South’s longest-serving female vocalist, Jacqui Abbott, spiked Paul Heaton’s sometimes glib songs with a hint of toxicity. It’s her barbed mellifluousness you remember from ‘Don’t Marry Her’ and ‘Rotterdam’ – superficially sunny, her voice contained a multitude of razor edges: in the same heartbeat, they seduced and socked you in the gut.
After more than a decade apart, and with the Beautiful South long since consigned to music’s great bargain bin in the sky, Heaton and Abbott have reunited for a project that showcases the best parts of their old band while mostly avoiding that project’s tendency to gush. Opening with the twisted, kinking ‘Moulding Of A Fool’, their voices intertwine just like you remember, his everyman burr somehow rendered poetic by her taut, pretty delivery.
The record was composed with Abbott in mind, Heaton has stated in interviews, and this single-mindedness has brought out the best in his writing – apart, arguably, from trying-too-hard single ‘DIY’. Elsewhere, the tone is wry and no-nonsense – and the result is a collection that will make you hanker for The Beautiful South and their gilded, caustic pop.