Ugly are anything but on their sparkling, proggy debut

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 not 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. The South Facade finds Ugly lolloping all the way down the jazz fusion and progressive rock avenues they merely zagged across on their stellar 2024 EP, Twice Around The Sun. 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 An...