Mat McHugh & The Beautiful Girls will embark on their first tour in three years this summer. The announce features 21 dates across the country, including WA shows at Freo.Social on Friday, February 17, and The River, Margaret River, on Saturday, February 18, 2023.
With combined sales of over 500,000 albums and 100 million streams, all released independently, the music of both Mat McHugh and his moniker, The Beautiful Girls, has won fans across the world. The Together At Last Tour will for the first time ever combine the work of both of McHugh’s groups on stage.
“That’s the agenda, just to try and let music help me make sense of it all again, like it always seems to do,” McHugh said, discussing the new tour, and his first-ever as Mat McHugh & The Beautiful Girls.
Always a prolific writer, McHugh explained how he would navigate the performance with his own work, along with songs from the The Beautiful Girls.
“I kind of kept them separate for a long time live for various reasons,” he said. “I saw them as two separate bodies of work, but at the core of it of course they’re basically the same thing. I mean, I make these records at home and play most if not all of the instruments on them, and so, after this past three years, I thought, ‘You know what? Part of this whole deal of recalibrating and getting back out on the road and seeing people and sharing music was just kind of stepping forward and joining the two bodies of work for the first time.”
“It’s a good healthy step forward and it allows me the luxury of just picking and choosing the best of all of it. I’m very, very proud of the music I released as The Beautiful Girls and I don’t want to stop playing it because I love it. It means a lot to me. This is a way of tying all those songs that people know, and people love, together so I get to release music in a way that feels honest and has integrity.”
McHugh will be joined by his band – bass player and producer Ian Pritchett, keyboardist Shannon Stitt and drummer Carlos Adura.
There will be no shortage of material to choose from, with six Beautiful Girls and three Mat McHugh albums, plus multiple EPs and singles, including McHugh’s most recent, Lagoon, which was released in 2020.
“Then there are the solo records and then the new songs,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice problem to have. I just want people to have a good time. I want them to be together.”
Beautiful Girls play Freo.Social, Fremantle, on Friday, February 17 and The River, Margaret River, on Saturday, February 18, 2023. For more info and to buy tickets, head to moshtix.com.au
