Pop, Jazz Reviews : Fine Lyrical Excursion to the Beautiful South

The Beautiful South met the adoring West at the Variety on Saturday, where one of England’s most original bands was greeted by a slavish cult of fans.

Most of the screamers appeared to be of high school age, but their youth reflects the exposure the band gets on KROQ rather than any teeny-bopper qualities in the music. The Beautiful South plays decidedly adult fare, blending witty, sardonic lyrics with a peculiar mesh of instruments. Nor do its members look the part of teen idols: Imagine your high school chess team 10 years after graduation and you’ve pretty much got the picture.

Musically, the Beautiful South came off at times as the consummate cabaret act, resurrecting spaghetti Western themes in “Here It Is Again” and ending the show with a loopy, horn-driven rendition of the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing.”

Paul Heaton, the most prominent of the three lead singers, combines the ungainliness of Gomer Pyle with a sort of dark, smirking intensity a la Robert De Niro, all of which was nicely set off by the archly perfect vocals and seductively coy movements of his female counterpart Briana Corrigan.

But the Beautiful South (which plays the Belly Up in Solana Beach tonight) also knows how to be serious, with achingly lovely results. The new “Bell-Bottomed Tear” and “We Are Each Other” were as mature sounding as “36D” was punk-era snotty. If all the parents who wait outside Beautiful South shows to drive their kids home knew that they’d enjoy the show too, the band would be selling out much bigger venues by now.