CD Review

Australia's The Beautiful Girls introduced themselves to the United States with 2005's We're Already Gone, an album of easy rockers dusted with sea breezes and salt spray. Despite the sudden emergence in the states, this wasn't the band's first foray into the studio. In their home country, the trio had already released five albums – a mix of EPs and LPs – prior to its international breakthrough. 

To follow the success of We're Already Gone, The Beautiful Girls decided to move ahead by looking behind, filling in their new American audience with Water, a compilation of tracks pulled from those earlier releases between 2002 and 2004. Structured in chronological order beginning with the oldest compositions, the 11 tracks champion the evolution of the band's summer-song approach; a brand of flowing, stripped down, mostly-acoustic compositions comfortably worn for after-surf relaxing and coastal daydreams. While The Beautiful Girls are much more raw on the early tracks, Water truly tells the story of a band on the rise in its own country, leading to its delivery into the international arena.