Album Review: The Beautiful South – Live At The BBC
3 min read
The UK’s The Beautiful South are set to release a definitive collection of hits this month that span the highly successful acts journey through music and the speakers of the BBC. Live At The BBC is a collection of the bands finest pieces of work covering close to two decades. Following in the footsteps of many other bands who have decided to release their time within the media giants guidance including more recently, Status Quo, Live At The BBC is a four disc collection that showcases a band who survived 19 years in the relentless world of the international stage.
The band, which consisted of Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway of Housemartins fame along with as Dave Rotheray, Dave Stead, Sean Welch and female vocalist Briana Corrigan, enjoyed success around the globe with singles Rotterdam, A Little Time and You Keep It All In and racked up 8 Top Ten records, among them an impressive 19 successful singles.
All of the hits are included on this new collection with each disc dedicated to specific periods and performances as captured by the BBC during the years of the bands success.
Disc One covers the years of 1989 to 2005 and includes 17 live performances including a gorgeous, perfectly harmonized version of Song For Whoever and a notable performance of Perfect 10 as well as an acoustically mellow cover of You’re The One That I Want filmed for the Jonathan Ross show back in 2004.
A live set from Blackburn’s, King George’s Hall in 1992 makes up disc number two and includes fantastic versions of the harmonica laden I Think The Answer’s Yes and Let Love Speak Up Itself where the audience help the band sing along from the start as the vocals are sweetly matched with a piano led number. The bands sole number one hit, A Little Time, is also a quick paced highlight on the disc as the vocals are delivered by Paul Heaton and Briana Corrigan around the bands talented structure of instruments.
The third disc is a collection of live performances from the band between 1997 and 2000. With visits to London’s Shepherds Bush Empire, the Brighton Centre, London Forum and Fleadh Festival, all showing face among the disc. The international smash hit Rotterdam is the obvious highlight on the disc and along with I’ll Sail This Ship Alone lets us revisit a string of the band most iconic and globally recognized numbers.
As well as the three disc set of tracks that have made the Beautiful South a household name the collection is completed generously with a bonus DVD consisting of an array of the bands most memorable and successful live BBC TV slots, particularly on the Jools Holland Show in which they regularly appeared throughout their heyday.
Though the band parted ways back in 2007, Live At The BBC gives us a catalogue of not only flawlessly performed live performances but showcases an extensive catalogue from one of the UK’s finest musical collectives of the past 30 years. The three discs together with the bonus DVD supply us with 50 tracks of British musical pride.
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