If you’re only just now hearing about a band called Ugly, beloved on the streets of South London, you might have a particular sound and image in mind – but Ugly are ecstatically a grotty, grimy post-punk posse. When they first burst onto the scene as a callow teenage cadre of King Krule-inspired slackers, their sound owed everything to Bloc Party and nothing to This Heat. Now, ten years on, their easygoing indie-rock ideals have been compromised by the deadliest of all vices: prog.
finds Ugly lolloping all the way down the jazz fusion and progressive rock avenues they merely zagged across on their stellar 2024 EP, . This doesn’t mean they’re wigging out for days at a time – the reasonable song lengths tell us this much – but instead that they joyously embody the boundless, freewheeling spirit that was at the core of the best of the ‘70s.
Like fellow Cambridgeshire expats Black Country, New Road, the complexity is kind of the point with Ugly. Every single part of every single song is crammed full of intricate melodies and sugar-rush harmonies, but with enough immediacy to ensure that it never gets exhausting or, worse, self-indulgent.
“Die Another Day” somehow finds a sweet spot between Steely Dan and Primus, with glistening yacht-rock guitar-and-piano arrangements pulled in all sorts of directions by a razor-sharp bassline. “Wasteland”, meanwhile, hits you off the bat with a scattershot array of drums and pointillist guitar stabs, but luckily the bombast is cushioned by the delightfully gusty vocal harmonies of Samuel Goater and Jasmine Miller-Sauchella.
“In Samphedoo” finds Fiona Apple-esque piano-rock hijacked by a Santana-spun guitar solo and an anguished spirograph choir straight outta “Bohemian Rhapsody”, while album highpoint “Gavement” sounds like six slumping and spidery sad songs played on top of one another – somehow, though the result is joyous and totally cathartic.
Ugly relish juxtaposing short bursts of brutal musicianship with ultra-sweet melodies, and the result is an album that, while breaking lots of interesting ground, is never a chore. File next to XTC and Prefab in your cabinet of bold British pop eccentrics, and far away from the music-as-sport noodlers like Magma, Dream Theater, and ELP.
finds Ugly choosing to walk a tightrope, constantly in danger of getting too high off their own supply but never quite losing their footing. The band's sheer immediacy keeps it thrilling, and their penchant for melody keeps it breezy. A place where freneticism and beauty can coexist, is one of 2026's most endlessly creative debuts. But maybe that’s to be expected. It has taken them ten trips around the sun to get here, after all.