Aqualung

London-based Matt Hales, aka Aqualung, started getting involved in music at a young age while listening to different tracks played at his parents' Southampton record store. He began writing songs at age four on his family's piano. At the age of 16, after achieving a scholarship, the enthusiastic young man began attending composition classes. A year later a symphony called Life Cycle became his debut in the classical field, performed by a 60-piece orchestra. His brother Ben joined him in a band to cover the Police's classic songs. In the early '90s, following studies at London's City University, he became part of the Britpop band Ruth, releasing Harrison on ARC Records in 1999. After leading the 45's (not the Atlanta-based garage rock revival band) and issuing two singles on Universal, Hales grew disenchanted and started working on Aqualung in 2002, often co-writing songs with his wife Kim Oliver and brother Ben Hales. The alternative rock project (initially just a lo-fi bedroom venture) became quickly popularized by a VW Beetle TV ad in the U.K. featuring his song "Strange and Beautiful (I'll Put a Spell on You)," which coincided with the release of his self-titled debut in 2002. Several singles followed into the next year, as well as his second album, the fuller-sounding Still Life. The record spawned another hit single in "Brighter Than Sunshine," and soon, various Aqualung tracks were popping up in popular television shows and movies on both sides of the Atlantic. Hales then combined tracks from his earlier U.K. albums into one 12-song set for Aqualung's proper American debut, which finally surfaced in early 2005 via Columbia Records entitled Brighter Than Sunshine. Extensive touring throughout North America followed over the next two years, driving the album to number one on Billboard's Heatseekers chart and going on to sell over 250,000 copies. On the road, since Hales was essentially just playing songs he'd written years earlier to a new audience, he would routinely switch up the Aqualung show with different musicians, settings, and approaches to keep things as fresh as possible. The diverse elements he explored during this time (including the echo device called the Memoryman) subsequently drove the creative process behind what would later become Aqualung's next album, March 2007's more ambitious Memory Man. In 2008 Aqualung released the intimate Words & Music, the band's Verve Forecast debut. ~ Drago Bonacich, All Music Guide