The Beautiful Girls - Spooks

20 May 2010 by Richard Wilson

It's been three years since The Beautiful Girls' last album Ziggurats, and in that time the band has extensively toured the globe and frontman Mat McHugh even slipped in a solo album. For the past year they've embarked on the odd tour or festival appearance in Australia and abroad, road-testing new tracks in between studio sessions that have finally yielded Spooks, The Beautiful Girls' forth album.

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As has become a trademark of sorts of The Beautiful Girls, Spooks shares only loose stylistic threads with the albums it has followed. One can feel the album taking cues from reggae sensibilities without being derivative; aside from the down-skank and dub flourishes, Spooks firmly carves its own unique territory that can't be pigeon-holed as anything really.

Hearing My Mind Is An Echo Chamber, it becomes impossible to really pinpoint any specific style. With a tight electric guitar piercing over the drawn out piano and horn sections, My Mind is best described as a rich infusion of rock into dub with hints of dance thanks to liberal use of samples and synthesizers; yet another addition to The Beautiful Girls' ever-growing bag of tricks.

Spooks may well be The Beautiful Girls' most accessible album to date; it's a looser beast than anything you'll have heard on previous albums, with drawn out instrumental jams and an overall more complex and layered sound. The smaller sound of past albums has been replaced by a more dynamic soundscape.

Perhaps unusual for The Beautiful Girls, Spooks is a great album to simply put on in the background and absorb subconsciously. In this sense there is an arc to the album that takes cues from modern dub; with tracks like the sprawling Home/Family sharing at least a common spirit with the likes of Fat Freddy's Drop. Followed up with Running, it becomes clear that Spooks showcases perhaps the best musicianship heard to date from The Beautiful Girls.

Paulie B's role in The Beautiful Girls is cemented with the pumping Rockers, a bass-driven jam that may well become a signature piece of the band's live show.

Even the more acoustic tracks feel richer that ever before. After All This Time has a clean UB40-esque style of reggae as it weaves its way through a Bonnie and Clyde story of love and adventure. The odd combination of ukulele and harmonium driven B Some Melody has the loose, spontaneous feel of McHugh's solo album Seperatista!, and clocks in at a short and pleasant 2:20.

There's a very personal feel to the lyrics of B Some Melody, though its steady crescendo of backing instruments to include keys, guitars and the faintest drums and backing vocals lead to this upbeat little track being perhaps the catchiest song of the album. Closing the album is the mournful My Latest Mistake, home to some of McHugh's strongest vocals to date, and an acoustic style that shows just how far this band have come over the years.

Produced by Mat McHugh, one gets the distinct impression that Spooks was a slow and meticulous labour of love. Throughout the album, a soundbank of effects and instrumental hooks interweave to peak at just the right times in a way that's never been tried on previous Beautiful Girls albums.

The Beautiful Girls have been more adventurous than ever with Spooks, but in so many more ways than just the styles of music that their collective love of music have brought them to. Spooks is a justifiably confident album.

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