After scattering a tantalising two-year trail of singles, each more sumptuous and eclectic than the last, the London six-piece’s ‘Twice Around The Sun’ is a fervent, intricate gem.

Ugly are something of an anomaly in emerging music circles right now, in that there really aren’t many acts that sound like them. Even Ugly themselves didn’t sound like this until recently; their current formation and output as a sextet is a world away from their pre-pandemic beginnings as a King Krule-meets-Cola kind of spacey indie four-piece. With influences that are now far more expansive and trickier to pin down, we hear notes of classical choral, folk and a slew of prog and art-rock greats from the past 60 years. Their sound has completely transformed. Gripping and squeezing us in their palms on the long-awaited ‘Twice Around The Sun’, the group bare all of their zeal and ambition on this debut collection, strung together as a series of sprawling and elaborate multi-part epics. And for an EP with a total run time of roughly 35 minutes, I mean epics.

While each track that makes up ‘Twice Around The Sun’ refuses to be wholly defined by its predecessor, one unifying and distinctive aspect of Ugly’s sound throughout is a consistently bold and creative use of voices. Poised and facing forwards, the unwaveringly lush a capellas that kick off opener ‘The Wheel’ firmly lay this foundation. These unfold from languid, supine harmonies into an all-consuming scurry of maypole-dancing counterpoint, ebbing and flowing with a labyrinthine urgency as the track stampedes from one new section to the next.

More of these shifting contrapuntal textures can be heard in the superlative, ‘Icy Windy Sky,’ which is also the only track on the EP not to have seen its own single release. Swishing acoustic guitars whip up a brooding, blustering wind, over which a unison of voices at first exclaim “Icy and windy sky, I know that I haven’t got the time, I know that”. From here, new harmonic iterations splinter apart in shades of azure and turquoise, every repetition weaving canorously into the next. Lyrically, adopting a ‘what it sounds like’ more so than a ‘what it means’ approach, the impact of each word sung lies largely in the patterns that are so confidently and intentionally forged, linguistic eccentricities loped in perfectly timed, sonically satisfying unison.

This emphasis on patterns is another notable aspect of the EP. Meticulously crafted like the intricate mechanisms of a watch but over mountainous plains, every broadly shifting song structure is demarcated with ornate repetitions that are enriched with an unbound dynamic freedom. Fidgeting eagerly, each and every sonic nook throngs with textures as decadently rich as they are mechanically precise, and with markedly clean and unadorned production. Whether venturing through the calmer, more pared back undergrowth of ‘Sha’ and ‘I’m Happy You’re Here,’ or the thrilling and capriciously bouncing tree branches of ‘Shepherds Carol’ or ‘The Wheel’, every track places you at a vantage point right in the eye of the storm.

On ‘Twice Around The Sun’, Ugly have well and truly turned up all of the dials to maximum, producing a spine-tinglingly urgent, wholly unique and vitally fresh new cut.