The Beautiful Girls On Tour Celebrating 20 Years Of ‘We’re Already Gone’

The Beautiful Girls are on tour for a massive Australian National Tour to celebrate 20 years of their iconic album, We’re Already Gone. Spanning capital cities and regional stops, this tour will be a must-see for fans old and new. For the first time ever, the band will perform We’re Already Gone in its entirety, alongside some of their biggest hits. With a six-piece lineup bringing the songs to life, expect an unforgettable night of sun-soaked melodies, reggae grooves, and deep nostalgia.

Originally released on July 4, 2005, We’re Already Gone became a Gold-certified classic, racking up over 50 million streams and earning nominations for ARIA, APRA, and Triple J awards. Featuring standout tracks like Ashes and Long Way Home, the album hit #1 on the AIR charts, cracked the ARIA Top 20, and even landed in the Top 10 on the U.S. Billboard Reggae charts. Mat McHugh talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

Another massive tour, you must be really excited to get back on the road?
Yeah, it’s been a while. We did some summer shows about a year and a half ago, but they were pretty low key. So yeah, it’s been a while. A year and a half of not picking up, well, I pick up a guitar every day, but it’s been a while since we’ve really hit the road.

Did you take a break to write and record a new album?
I’m constantly recording. I have a studio in my house, so I’m always working. I make a point to record, write, and stay active whenever I have time. I’ve done that pretty much the entire time. But I’ve also got a teenage son, and after a full-on period of activity in my career, he was born. My priority shifted to doing as little as I could professionally to be present at home. I never had my dad around when I was young, so that mattered to me. My focus has been on raising him and recording music when I’m able, then fitting in little bits of touring when it makes sense. I’ve been busy, just not publicly.

Can you believe it’s the twentieth anniversary of We’re Already Gone? It seems as if a lot has happened in those twenty years?
Yeah, it’s weird. I don’t really think about the passing of time until I look backward. Probably like most people, whether you have a kid, hit a milestone, or something causes you to reflect, suddenly you realise, Wow, okay. I’ve always shied away from nostalgia, I don’t really lean on it. So when the idea of doing a tour came up, I was reluctant. I didn’t want it to feel like a gimmick. I decided to sit with the record, listen to it, and reconnect with it. I hadn’t listened to it in ages. I never really go back to albums after they’re recorded. The songs we play live evolve over time, versions of versions of versions, like Chinese whispers. They get further and further from how they began. Going back to the record and hearing how they originally were, enough time had passed that it felt cool. Like someone else made it. Learning those songs again as they were recorded was actually exciting. The music held up, and that got me invested in playing it live again.

Does playing the album start to finish give it a new lease of life?
Yeah. The songs morph so much over years of touring. When we rehearse, we’re usually listening to a live version from the last tour. So the songs evolve in a way that’s removed from their original form. Getting back to the intent of the album, playing the songs as they were recorded, has been a challenge, but a rewarding one. The record really holds up. At first, I struggled to play and sing it the way it was recorded. It took me back to the headspace of when it was created. Figuring that out was cool, I enjoyed it.

Did you have to listen to the album a lot to get back into that groove? Or did it come back like muscle memory?
It took effort. It put me back into the mindset of where I was, what motivated the record. Almost like a time machine. When I made it, I wanted it to be reggae, but not cliché reggae. I wanted it angular, wiry on the guitar, a bit weird. That’s all there in the record, but I had to go backward and relearn how to pull it off. It wasn’t muscle memory, it was the opposite. But that process gave me a lot. It put me in a good place, gave me a fresh perspective.

Have you been buoyed by the fan reaction to the tour?
Yeah. What happened is, we had our first big moment with Learn Yourself. The twentieth anniversary passed by and I completely forgot about it. One day, I realized it had been twenty one years and thought, oh, that was last year. So, no big celebration for that. This time, someone reminded me about the twentieth anniversary of We’re Already Gone, so I posted about it on social media. The response was crazy. My booking agent called me up saying, We’ve got to do a tour. I was hesitant at first, but the love for it just made it happen. That’s the best kind of reward, because the intent behind this band has always been pure. We’ve always been independent, never taken advertising money, never signed a major label deal, even when offers came in. Everything had to feel right. If people love the record, it’s because they found it. Someone introduced it to them. It’s always been musically driven first, if people connect with it, it’s for the right reasons. To see that still upheld all these years later, that’s the greatest reward. That’s humbling.

I know you said that you don’t get stuck in nostalgia, but do you remember when the album came out? Are there moments that still stand out that you reflect on?
Yeah, it’s weird. It became the start of having to fight to bring our albums to life. The first record was a surprise success, it was technically a demo that blew up and got radio play. For the next one, I consciously poured more fuel on that fire. At the time, the whole scene, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, The Roots, was blowing up. I thought, people are listening, the shows are selling out, this is amazing. So I leaned into it. There was a distinct motivation to align with what was happening around us. But for this album, the motivation was the opposite. I didn’t want it to fit neatly into anything. It had to be completely different. I wanted to pull together all the things I loved, and if that resulted in a weird mess, so be it. When it first came out, people didn’t react positively. I think they expected more acoustic, breezy stuff, and this album wasn’t that. The first tour, people liked it, but it was a challenge.

Then the nominations came, people started talking about it, critics weighed in. It slowly picked up steam. Eventually, it became beloved. That was the moment it opened the door for us to truly do what we wanted musically, without being trapped in a cycle of repeating what worked before. It was pivotal. But it didn’t launch like a blockbuster.

The real feather in the cap must be that you’ve been able to do it your way, with total control over direction, compared to bands constrained by outside forces?
Yeah, it’s the greatest thing, but it’s hard fought. A lot of music is made with the wrong motivation. There’s already so much music in the world, but labels want profit, people chase fame, attention. The driving force behind much of what gets created feels inauthentic to me. Why does this record exist? Why does this whole machine around it exist? For me, if a song didn’t need to exist, I wouldn’t write it. Wouldn’t release it. That made every step harder, fighting to be on the battlefield with all these heavily funded acts.

It took hard work, resilience, sticking to the vision. But it also speaks to the people who responded to the ethos behind it. That’s the greatest reward. I chose that path over money. I wouldn’t change a thing.

With this tour’s momentum, do you start thinking about another album? Or are there other plans beyond the tour?
There are always plans. I’ve probably recorded half a dozen albums since the last one, but I haven’t felt the need to release them. For me, it’s almost philosophical. I feel like I have a debt to repay to music itself. I need to stay involved in my creative relationship with music, keep it honest, stay motivated the right way. Recently, I just needed to create for the sake of creation, without turning it into a product. But I do feel like I want to release something soon. At this point, sharing it would be more beneficial than keeping it private. What happens after that? Fully leaning back into touring? I don’t know. I prefer no attention over attention. I don’t feel comfortable on stage, under a spotlight, even talking about myself, ironically. I’m trying to balance it all. Loving music, being creative, saying something real, while only dipping my toe into the industry machinery.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch The Beautiful Girls on the following dates, tickets here…