Three Q’s with Mat McHugh of …

The Beautiful Girls

When the tour bus containing The Beautiful Girls rolls into town
next week, don’t expect a horde of models to be disembarking.
Having been Australian favorites since their first release, Morning
Sun, appeared in 2002, the Sydney-based band has been throwing
forth their melodic beauty ever since. And with their reputation as
being one of that country’s finest live acts, The Beautiful Girls
were soon spreading their musical charm and splendor across the
world.

The Beautiful Girls have taken their distinctive sound further
down the road of musical progression with We’re Already Gone, their
latest record. And, in so doing, they have graciously delivered
another smart and evocative album that not only offers a collision
of structure and riff, but one gloriously executed through a unique
mix of art, dub, and rock. How will this all play out on stage?
Venture along to SOhO on Tuesday, March 21 and see for
yourself.

Your latest album We’re Already Gone is a little edgier
than its predecessors. What’s the progression in the general sound
of the music? I think we’re just basically trying to get
better at what we do. We’re constantly trying to keep ourselves
interested and enthusiastic and I think the best way to do that is
to push ourselves and see what we’re capable of doing. I think we’d
all get very bored putting out the same record over and over.

You’ve often cited Jack Johnson as an influence on your
early recordings. So whom do you think Jack Johnson sounds
like? I can hear a lot of different influences in Jack’s
music but at the end of the day he just sounds like himself. No
music stands alone and everything is informed by something else.
It’s what you do with those influences that counts. I think Jack’s
great.

Like all worthy art forms, music has a tremendous
capacity to move and inspire. What influence would you like to
think The Beautiful Girls’s music exerts upon its
listeners? Well, hopefully people are entertained,
inspired, and moved. We love music and it does a lot for all of us
in the band. So we just hope we can transfer even a little bit of
that feeling to somebody else.