Painting It Red

After seven albums the tried and tested Beautiful South formula of sophisticated melodies, transparent production and quirky lyrics is wearing a bit thin, if not actually verging on the irritable. Worse, this irritation isn’t cured by discovering that the lavish packaging both lists and contains the lyrics for 19 tracks, whereas two of them, ‘Chicken Wings’ and ‘Who’s Gonna Tell’, have mysteriously disappeared from the CD. Despite the presence of Fatboy Norman on “open groove surgery” Painting It Red is standard early evening background music for would-be trendy pubs.

Fatboy’s surgery is most obvious on the opening track ‘Closer Than Most’ with it’s somewhat funky synth riff and no-nonsense vocals, but it owes more than a few bob to the Faces, and ‘Hot On The Heels’ is uncannily reminiscent of country ace John Prine. The winsome ‘Hit Parade’ shows a touch or two of Bill Withers and namechecks our own WB Yeats, but any song that mentions Chet Baker and Miles Davis can’t be all bad.

Painting It Red won’t find diehard fans too inconsolable, but neutral observers might suspect that either Heaton and Rotheray need another holiday in the sun or that sell-by date has moved a little closer.