Beautiful South, The

A “secret” unplugged gig, in support of a just released best of compilation, this one-off performance from Hull’s finest featured just the core of the band, vocalists Paul Heaton, Dave Hemingway and guitarist Paul Rotheray.

For an arena-filling band like Beautiful South it was an unusual departure but the lack of a full compliment of musicians was more than made up for by the intimacy of the performance.

In trademark scruffy anorak and crumpled jeans, a leaner, healthier Heaton, slugged alcohol-free beer throughout the evening, which amounted to a crowd-pleasing greatest hits set with a handful of more obscure numbers thrown in. In top vocal form he gave his all on sublime South standards like, ‘Blackbird On The Wire’, ‘Old Red Eyes Is Back’ and ‘I’ll Sail This Ship Alone’. He even attempted, ‘Don’t Marry Her (Fuck Me’) a song normally performed by the recently departed Jackie Abbot (though he declined requests for, ‘A Little Time’ a song more associated with her predecessor Briana Corrigan).

Meanwhile the often underrated Dave Hemingway soared the melodic heights on the rarely performed, ‘Song For Whoever’ the band’s first hit from 1989. The evening was rounded off with a rousing ‘Perfect Ten’ and a tongue-in-cheek version of the John Travolta/Olivia Newton John smash from Grease, ‘You’re The One That I Want’.

A Hull of a night!

Colm O’Hare