There aren't many more classic Novocastrian summer pastimes than enjoying a drink at the iconic Queens Wharf Hotel looking back towards Nobbys Lighthouse. This summer the soundtrack to that scene will be provided by surf-folk legends The Beautiful Girls.
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Foundation band member Mat McHugh will be performing all his classics like La Mar (The Ocean) and Periscopes on the greatest hits tour to promote his new best of compilation Seaside Highlife, on vinyl.
"Seaside Highlife is representative of a particular era of the band and a stepping-off point for the next one," McHugh said. "That's why we put 'Volume I' in the title. To top it off, the artwork has photos from right across The Beautiful Girls' career.
"What I really wanted to do with a 'best of' is, I really wanted to create a good introduction to The Beautiful Girls for people and what better than to have it on vinyl? If you've never heard of the band and want to hear it at its highest quality and best sound ever, this is the way."
The Beautiful Girls perform at Queens Wharf Hotel on January 18. Tickets cost $44.
Seaside Highlife is also a milestone release, with The Beautiful Girls celebrating 20 years as a band. McHugh has pulled together his favourite tracks from across all five The Beautiful Girl Albums albums, as well as the debut EP, thrown in an acoustic version of the 2018 single Beautiful World and released it as a vinyl double-LP.
So, what do you do when you release an album like Seaside Highlife, Greatest Hits Volume I? You take it to the people, large as life and twice as much fun.
"We're basically going play the album - four sides, double vinyl - all of it, in order but we'll also rotate some songs off other records every night, which will be really nice," McHugh said.
"So we're taking out an expanded six-piece lineup - guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, horn section. We've kept it back the past couple of years and done it as a three-piece but a lot of this music has a lot of detail and a lot of layers to it, from We're Already Gone onwards - there are keyboards and horn sections - so I'm excited to put that whole arc from the beginning to the end of the record, to try and cover that in a live set.
"In putting this record together there hasn't been a corner cut, artistically, and I'm approaching the tour in the same way. I want to really celebrate what's been achieved and have a party before I begin the next volume. It's gonna be like the Rolling Thunder Revue! It's just going to be like this travelling circus through Australia in the summertime, which is completely befitting really. It's exactly the environment for The Beautiful Girls. It's the perfect way to spend summer."
