Delving into the uncanny, discordant and bizarre, Ugly are at their most propulsive, interconnected and spellbinding.
“April is the cruellest month, breeding // Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing // Memory and desire, stirring // Dull roots with spring rain.” T.S. Eliot, ‘The Wasteland’
Modernist poetry rarely compares easily to contemporary art-rock; in fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find band that converses well with such writing. Ugly are the exception. Cambridge alumni and indie darlings of London’s Windmill scene return with their debut album, ‘The South Façade’. Following their standout 2024 EP ‘Twice Around the Sun’, the six-piece art-rock outfit has brewed a debut filled with experimental guitars, restlessness, and their characteristic lyrical abstraction. Delving into the uncanny, discordant and bizarre, the band are at their most propulsive, interconnected and spellbinding on ‘The South Façade’, which fleshes out the themes of Eliot’s form of modernism.
Written across various writing retreats in converted barns, empty rehearsal studios and one another’s living rooms, ‘The South Façade’ embraces lyrical inquiry. Unearthing the roots of songwriting, the band upend convention, creating tracks that feel both uncanny and deeply intimate. The album’s opener, ‘Wasteland’, showcases Ugly’s songwriting ingenuity. Phrases like “the guy on the news knows your height” and “ace of spades” build a Lynchian dreamscape which teeters between reality and fiction. With fast-paced staccato vocals and post-chorus harmonies, ‘Wasteland’ conjures a disorienting atmosphere: short-breathed, perplexing and untethered. Perhaps in conversation with its eponymous predecessor, the track embraces the spiritual and physical interconnection, as does T.S. Eliot’s modernist epic. The band make their decree: We are to head “straight to the Wasteland”.
Delving further into the abstracted world, ‘In Samphedoo’ is the album’s final relinquishment to the otherworldly. As nonsensical as its namesake, the track blends vocal styles, instrumentation and moods into an extravagant concoction channeling Steely Dan and Blue Nile. Performed as a round, the song ebbs and flows around Jasmine’s singular refrain, “round the bend, round the corner, nothing like the taste of atmosphere,” and their collected harmony, “I let my hair down”. Ending with this gothic, medieval chanting, the whimsy of their layered vocals gives way to a mournful, funereal tune that weaves between nostalgia and loss. Linear storytelling is discarded across the album, something most noticeable on the title track and ‘Gavement’. The latter’s sliding guitar notes and plodding vocals create a despondency that grapples with unprecedented existential dread. Lyrical questions like “Where do we go?” and “What makes God turn around?” sit unanswered and empty in the track’s deeper, sorrowful pitch. Ugly take us on a journey that constantly changes direction, creating worlds that entice us into the unknown, the mysterious and sometimes the dangerous.
Grandiose in both lyricism and instrumentation, ‘The South Façade’ showcases a band truly invested in one another. Fleshed out with harmonies and exploratory instrumentation, the album is a successful collaborative endeavour. In ‘Nat Cora & The Nations’, strange, fragmentary images are stitched together by the band’s delicate vocals and instrumentation. The atonal arrangement maintains an intrigue in the tracks’ trajectory, with this continued sense of coming and going emphasised through the juxtaposed refrain “Are you disappearing? / Hold me close.” Concluding with the MIDI-synth fuzz, the track drifts into an abyss that the band tentatively crawls out of.
Despite Ugly’s classification as one of London’s leading guitar bands, ‘The South Façade’ demonstrates their multifaceted instrumental talents. Driven by a bright piano melody, ‘Marina’ diverges from the encompassing electricity of their other tracks. Soft and gentle, the piano drifts you along Jasmine’s cry for ‘Marina’. Her name is called upon like a spell: “All you need is Marina.” As the track culminates, this angelism surrenders to the grittier, electric, riffed conclusion.
‘The South Façade’ showcases Ugly’s instrumental and lyrical talents, while investing in the exploratory and experimental. The closing track, ‘Orance’ puts this adventurous nature on full display. Its harmonies expand further, with overlaid vocals that criss-cross one another. Emerging from its dreariness, ‘Orance’ feels like an ancient spirit shaking off its old wounds. The band playfully experiments with sound, adding humorous touches – the woof after mention of a“little black dog” and the ribbit after “little black frog” – to dispel the intensity of the previous tracks. Reconciling with the world they’ve created, Ugly offer a reassuring hand: “Where you’re flowers grow, you’ll know.”
