“Beautiful Friend” / “Life’s Too Easy” (Ardeck ARDS 10) February 1982
The Undertones | Beautiful Friend (Ardeck) 1982 | Sweet Sharkey pours his syrup over yet another splash of hard masculine wetness. Soft and (as always) classy. The Undertones roll around in search of something truly sensual and fail, beautifully.
Will they never grow up? Despite obvious musical advances they still retain that sixth form naivete. Self parody flashes past them, and thankfully never seem to score a hit.
Good knows, if The Undertones ever left their schoolboy comic sadness (see Gregory’s Girl) they would probably lose all. Stay in that lucrative trap. Undertones, your nine lives success is unique. Another middling hit. (Sounds, 20/02/82)
The Undertones | Beautiful Friend (Ardeck) 1982
Delicate sounding but tough underneath; a pleasure to listen to, but unlikely to set the charts alight, “Julie Ocean” didn’t, after all, and that was a stronger (in fact a classic) song. (Record Mirror, 20/02/82)
Undeterred by the failure of “Julie Ocean” to make the impression it should have, The Undertones go for another irregular little piece. It takes only two plays before it’s weaved the way around the brain, sly as a fox.
The Undertones can’t be slotted into any particular trend (and don’t you love them for it), much of which has to do with Sharkey’s great voice, but mostly it’s because The Most Awkward Men In The Pop World keep doing what they want to do. “Beautiful Friend” is a special kind of seduction.
Still the best thing to come out of Northern Ireland in the past four years. (NME, 20/02/82)
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