A Beautiful Beast

By the end of 2013, singer-songwriter Mat McHugh was determined that, from now on, The Beautiful Girls were done and dusted. They’d had a great run, established him not only nationally but also internationally, but now it was time to step out from behind the “band” name and become Mat McHugh. As this year ends, however, he’s released a new album, Dancehall Days, and released it as The Beautiful Girls.

“I kind of had a notion of it,” McHugh concedes, “but what I realised is that that particular beast is bigger than I am. The whole thing’s just weird to me, but depending on what day and what way I think about it, I totally understand it and other days I’m totally baffled. I think the main thing with it is the idea that we’re branded; like I just used this platform, this name, for so long, and in an era – it sounds weird to even say that – but in an era where there was an opportunity to have four records in a row all over the radio where today everything’s sped up, with so many people making stuff, it’s really difficult to get a foothold to make a brand. I understand the value of that and I understand that once the name of something has entered into people’s consciousness that it’s just there.”

Not that McHugh didn’t try of course, releasing two solo albums – 2008’s Seperatista! and 2012’s Love Come Save Me – and, earlier this year, More Money (Extended Play).

“The thing that I came to terms with was that it’s the same people, same songs, same everything – it’s just about that name on the poster. The whole thing was doing my head in until I got to the point where I thought, ‘What’s the problem with the name? What’s the issue?’ Perhaps I felt a bit hemmed in because we’d always sold the perception of a band – all our press stuff was a photo of three guys, even though we called it a collective. But I felt all the records had to sound like it was made by those three people, and I’d reached a point where I felt really inhibited.

“Then the light bulb went off. That was my problem – no one else was creating those boundaries. I realised that the message, ethics and method behind it have stayed pretty consistent. It’s all the same collective throughout, just experimenting with ways of presenting it.” 

Meanwhile, McHugh had been writing regardless and the more he wrote, the more it sounded like a Beautiful Girls record anyway.

“I do feel like, in a way, The Beautiful Girls of that era are dead, and now a new one’s been born. I really like to listen to hose early raw styles of dub and dancehall, where it’s real clunky... those heavy beats and rhythms.”