The Beautiful South

The international success (outside the U.S.) of Carry On Up the Charts led to the Beautiful South getting another shot at the American market. Still considered "too English" by clueless Yank execs, Paul Heaton's once-bleak worldview gets a midwinter thaw on such ace tracks as "Rotterdam," "Have Fun," and "Liar's Bar."

Guitars vestigial, jokes brittle sometimes but no less funny, Paul Heaton's finest album evolves toward the calling he was born too late for: music hall. Like such northern stars as Dan Leno and George Formby Sr., he voices the sharp-witted resentments of working stiffs resigned to their lot. Or maybe not: from "Don't marry her, f*ck me" to "Imagine a mirror/Bigger than the room it was placed in," a few women here see beyond the repressive depression of English suburban life, where one of two husbands drinks as much as Heaton and the other is as boring as Phil Collins--and the loners are tedious souses. The triumph in this vein is "Liars Bar," the greatest in a long line of drinking songs by the man who's said: "I consider myself a workaholic, it's just that I like to have a drink while I'm working." It comes with a video in which a disheveled Heaton leads a chorus of homeless drunks through a lurching soft shoe like a born variety artist. "I'm a standup comedian," he sings, and it sounds like a job application. (Grade - A)