Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott - Crooked Calypso

The Guardian 80

(Virgin EMI)

During his Housemartins days, Paul Heaton masterfully squeezed his observations about British society’s ironies and inequalities into infectious four-minute pop songs. On Crooked Calypso, his third album with his Beautiful South bandmate Jacqui Abbott, it’s a mode he returns to with gusto, his droll lyricism drilling into subject matter from obesity on The Fat Man to racial politics (The Lord Is a White Con) and the cavernous divide between rich and poor (People Like Us), over a backing of the kind of jaunty pop that can take in folk, disco and blues without ever breaking its buoyant stride.

It’s not all social justice worrying, however. On I Gotta Praise and Love Makes You Happy, the pair prove they can still effortlessly knock out the archly brash and heart-wrenchingly simple love songs that characterised their Beautiful South output. Clearly, the well of witty, interesting pop that Heaton has been drawing from throughout his career has not yet run dry.