t h e be a u t i f u l g i r l s
Has The Beautiful Girls always been a stage name for Mat McHugh rather than the name of a trio? People think the band is splitting up, but for me I don’t think it can split up. The Beautiful Girls has always been a name that I have put my music out under. Even from the start, I had the name written on demos and then roped in a couple of mates to flesh out the sound. Without ruining any mystique, [The Beautiful Girls] has always been a singer/songwriter project from the get-go. John Butler and these guys go out under their own names, but [the solo songwriting process] is exactly the same. So your upcoming tour is a farewell to a name? I felt the time was right for me to start using my own name. Splitting up suggests animosity — I’m not sick of the guys [bassist Paulie B and drummer Bruce Braybrooke]. I love them to death and we’ll probably continue together in some way, shape or form. It’s more about taking ownership of my songs and my music under my own name. It begs the question, why didn’t you use your own name from the outset? That is the $64,000 question, isn’t it? (laughs). The truth of it is when I grew up I was a surfer, so my peers listened to punk rock bands, noisy electric guitar bands and grunge. On the side, I played acoustic guitar my whole life. The group that I grew up around — my peers that played
have any plans to release any music as The Beautiful Girls for the imminent future. But I don’t think a lot of these songs will ever stop getting played, because I still really like them — I consider them all fair game. Obviously, doing solo shows, it’s more acoustic-based, so I tend not to play much of the rocky or dub/reggae stuff. That’s the benefit of being around for 10 years. I have a pretty decent set of songs to choose from. Your record Love Come Save Me is a return to your early, stripped-back acoustic sound. Musically, have you come full-circle? I’m always interested in doing different things. My primary [reason] for releasing music [under] my own name has been to strip my music back to its essence. What suits me the best is playing simple acoustic music that is based around melodies, lyrics and a certain feeling. A lot of the decisions I made in The Beautiful Girls were somewhat reactionary, because we’d get lumped in with Jack Johnson so I’d try to do the opposite. But I’ve come to the point where I don’t care — if someone wants to compare me to Jack Johnson or Ben Harper that’s fine. You’re always going to get comparisons, but I’m just trying to express myself honestly in the most appropriate way. I’ll be interested in doing other projects, maybe like a heavier dub record, but I’ll just put it out under a different name, rather than calling it The Beautiful Girls. I feel like I was pushing my luck a lot of the
Beautiful Beginnings
For a young songwriter growing up in a surfing culture, releasing music under your own name was not an option. So MAT MCHUGH took on the name The Beautiful Girls for his beach-fire ballads. Ten years later, after world tours and hundreds of thousands of records sold, the songwriter is putting his stage name to bed and taking his rightful place in the sunshine of the spotlight. McHugh explains his decision to NICK MILLIGAN.
music — nobody would even consider [releasing] their music under their own name. Even if they wrote it themselves — it was just not the thing. Everyone would consider you a wanker. I also felt that [the moniker] was a protective mechanism. If people thought it sucked, it would be onceremoved from me. I guess I didn’t feel confident enough. You have started releasing solo records under your own name — when you perform as Mat McHugh will you still perform your Beautiful Girls material? On my solo tours for the last year and a half I’ve played Beautiful Girls songs. I love them. That’s the thing that I want to get across to people. This [tour] isn’t going to be the last time you hear the songs. When a press release goes out and it says “this is the last Beautiful Girls tour”, it’s sensationalised. But the reality is I don’t actually know what’s going to happen today or tomorrow. What I try to get across to people is that I don’t
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time. Some of [The Beautiful Girls’ music] should have come out under a different name. It’s been a strange series of mini-cycles where we put out a record that was so different to the one before it. It took a year-and-a-half of touring for people to get used to it. By the time they were used to [our sound], I’d change it again. So we were always playing catch-up. It was interesting and fulfilling creatively, but I got to the end of that cycle and thought [acoustic music] is what I’m most comfortable with. I really enjoy just sitting around playing the acoustic guitar and singing some mellow songs. I’m a mellow guy — that’s the truth of it. The Beautiful Girls play the the Metro Theatre, Sydney, on Friday August 31; Entrance Leagues Club on Saturday September 1; Bar On The Hill, Newcastle Uni, on Thursday September 13; Port Macquarie Panthers on Friday September 14; Hoey Moey Hotel, Coffs Harbour, on Saturday September 15.
reverb magazine issue #072 — Aug 2012 29