Ugly

Just when you’ve figured hot-tipped sextet Ugly out, they take you someplace completely new. Take a song like ‘The Wheel’, for example, which strikes as a math-core/post-rock version of Fleetwood Mac. Or a song like “Hands of Man”, which sounds like ‘The Bends’-era Radiohead through a rose-colored Stereolab-filter. 

You don’t need to be Nostradamus to realise why the Cambridge-based group is lauded among ‘the best of what’s next’ among tastemakers an awful lot lately. We hear vocal harmonies that wouldn’t be out of place at a wholesome high school musical recital, juxtaposed with dazzling, nightmarish prog-jazz plunges that could soundtrack an Ari Aster film. 

The idea of what constitutes a song is stretched to its very limits, executed with a warm exuberance and ease. Ugly is a gift that keeps on giving to the adventurous ear, rendering the good and the bad utterly obsolete.