Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott New Album, Crooked Calypso, July 21

02 JUNE 2017 (Toronto, ON) – Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott will release their third album Crooked Calypso July 21 via Virgin EMI/Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company. Crooked Calypso boasts all the hallmarks of Heaton’s peerless songwriting: songs buoyant with melody, and redolent with biting wit, but also real emotion. Opening track I Gotta Praise, a euphoric secular Gospel anthem, raises the roof and opens the record in style. The Lord Is A White Con, meanwhile, considers religion as an exploitative tool of empire builders, while She Got The Garden is the wittiest divorce song since D-I-V-O-R-C-E.  And then there is Blackwater Banks, a gorgeous Irish waltz that the Dubliners would be proud to call their own.
Produced by long time collaborator John Williams who produced both Housemartins albums and the previous two Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott albums – What Have We Become (2014) and Wisdom, Laughter & Lines (2015) – the record was recorded at the Chairworks studios in Castleford, West Yorkshire. As is Paul Heaton’s habit, the lyrics were written in Monnickendam and Volendam in Holland and the music was composed in a hotel in Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. Since 1985 (ie every song he’s written since Flag Day and Happy Hour with the Housemartins) Heaton has recorded the songwriting process on an old portable Phillips tape recorder, but for this record he has dramatically broken with tradition and has committed the early versions of the songs to a smart phone.
Says Paul: “This album was good fun to write. The whole process of songwriting for me has become easier, more enjoyable. I used to go away to write songs, and put myself in a deliberate rut in pursuit of melancholy. I don’t do that anymore.
I suppose it’s been a good few years for me. There’s a sense that people are happy to see us again. That’s made me more confident, and I suppose you can see that in the writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still grumpy, but I’m content in my grumpiness now. I’m no longer frothing at the mouth.”
Says Jacqui: “Singing was something I was never going to do with my life. I just sort of fell into it, an accident, the result of me being in the right place at the right time. But I’ve always loved singing Paul’s songs, and I love them even more now. I’m biased, of course, but he’s just becoming better and better. It’s an honour to sing alongside him.”
The full tracklisting of ‘Crooked Calypso’ is:

1. I Gotta Praise
2. He Wants To
3. If I May
4. She Got The Garden
5. People Like Us
6. Blackwater Banks
7. The Lord Is A White Con
8. Silence Is
9. Love Makes You Happy
10. The Fat Man
11. Your Bit Of Stuff
12. He Can’t Marry Her

The deluxe edition will feature four additional new songs:

13. Market Street
14. Since My Dearest Husband
15. The Future Mrs Heaton
16. The Dice

The limited edition CD deluxe edition will feature a live concert on DVD, that features all of the hits and more from Paul Heaton’s extraordinary career, from the Housemartins through the Beautiful South to his current duo with Jacqui Abbott.  The tracklisting is:
PAUL HEATON & JACQUI ABBOTT
Live At The Scarborough Open Air Theatre
5th August 2016

1. Wives 1,2 & 3
2. Old Red Eyes Is Back
3. Moulding Of A Fool
4. Have Fun
5. The Horse And Groom
6. I Can’t Put My Finger On It
7. Prettiest Eyes
8. Sundial In The Shade
9. The Queen Of Soho
10. Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)
11. I Don’t See Them
12. Build
13. Don’t Marry Her
14. Five Get Overexcited
15. The Austerity Of Love
16. Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)
17. D.I.Y
18. Happy Hour
19. Perfect 10
20. Caravan Of Love
21. A Little Time
22. You Keep It All In
23. Heatongrad
24. Woman In The Wall

Paul Heaton, one of the UK’s most successful songwriters with some 15 million album sales under his belt, first came to public attention in the early 80s as front man of Hull-based indie poppers The Housemartins (the same group that spawned Norman ‘Fatboy Slim’ Cook), best known for their third single Happy Hour and their No 1 acapella Isley Bros cover Caravan Of Love.  The Housemartins released two albums London 0 Hull  4 (1986) and The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death (1987).  In 1988, Heaton formed The Beautiful South, who released 10 hugely successful albums – Welcome To The Beautiful South (1989), Choke (1990), 0898 Beautiful South (1992), Miaow (1994), Blue Is The Colour (1996), Quench (1998), Painting It Red (2000), Gaze (2003), Golddiggas, Headnodders & Pholk Songs (2004) and Superbi (2006).   In 2001, Heaton took a break from The Beautiful South and released his first solo album Fat Chance. The Beautiful South called it a day in 2007 citing ‘musical similarities’.  Jacqui Abbott was lead vocalist in The Beautiful South from ’94 to 2000 and she sang many of their signature hits including Rotterdam, Perfect 10, Don’t Marry Her and Dream A Little Dream.  Paul Heaton went on to release two further solo albums: The Cross-Eyed Rambler (2008) and Acid Country (2010).  In 2011, Heaton wrote a musical called ‘The 8^th’ based on the Seven Deadly Sins and asked Jacqui to sing one of the parts.  They have since released two acclaimed albums as a duo: What Have We Become (2014) and Wisdom, Laughter and Lines (2015).