NOW THEY'RE SITTING PRETTY

Things got a little complicated the last time The Beautiful Girls set their sights on the United States.

Last year, the Australian band's drummer, touring keyboardist and tour manager didn't have the correct visas and were stopped at the U.S./Canada border, thereby messing up a scheduled West Coast swing.

Everything is in order this fall, with the band touring America in support of a new album, Ziggurats, released last month in the United States via Controlled Substance Sound Labs.

There are traces of Police-style reggae rock throughout Ziggurats and some Midnight Oil-esque social commentary on the album, too. That's interesting because growing up, singer Mat McHugh kept his distance from those bands and many of their contemporaries. Only in recent years has he come to appreciate what they did.

"I grew up listening to my dad's records," McHugh tells Sounding Off. "Country and blues were all I heard for a long time, and I guess I thought that all the stuff that was on the radio in the ‘80s was kinda corny at the time. It was more about avoiding the status quo than it was a reflection of the bands themselves. It wasn't until recently that it dawned on me how powerful and interesting some of the bands from that era really are."

McHugh credits Mark Needham, who mixed Ziggurats, for the "hugeness" of the album.

"All of the songs had been arranged and somewhat mixed when we took them to him, but we wanted a big rock sound, and he knows exactly how to get that done," says McHugh. “He works out of a pretty amazing studio in the Hollywood hills and has a lot of cool gear, so it was a good place to hang out and mix a record."

The Beautiful Girls will be the headliners Tuesday (Nov. 20) at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park and the openers for Friday's (Nov. 23) bill at Terminal 5 in New York. For more information, visit www.stoneponyonline.com.

The official Beautiful Girls site is www.thebeautifulgirls.com.