On the Rise
UGLY

Since forming almost a decade ago, the band has shifted their sound considerably – morphing from rattling post-punk, surf-o-rama into something ritualistic and fluid, a kind of folk with soil under its nails and ghosts at its heels. It would be incorrect to call Ugly a collective, but they aren’t quite a band in the traditional sense, given their constant evolving and gleeful dedication to collaboration.

“It’s a very exploratory project,” says frontman Samuel Goater, sitting at work, his dog intermittently barking in the background. “We tried to make sure that everyone in the band has a voice. And everyone in the band has quite different influences, so there’s a weird melting pot of lots of different inspirations that we sift through with each other. Hopefully it comes out with something cool. Sometimes it’s nonsense.”

Formed in Cambridge out of school-time camaraderie and now largely London-based after several line-up changes, Ugly didn’t realise how far they’d come until the release of their debut EP, Twice Around the Sun. Critically acclaimed and amassing them a dedicated following, it was an assertive release filled with lush vocal harmonies, intricate arrangements, and genre-blending choral textures. Safe to say, the release earmarked this as a project to keep an eye on.

Looking back a year later, Goater reflects on its endurance with mild surprise: “We had a group of singles that didn’t necessarily work that well with each other. They weren’t that cohesive. But we wanted to put them in one [release].” What began as a pick ‘n’ mix of archive and exploration took on a new shape once it left their hands. “People have sort of created this narrative around it. I think there were lyrical themes – sort of folky mantras and those kinds of things.”

When we think of folk music, we often picture the pastoral, the ways songs can evoke the seasons in sound. The picking of a twangy guitar alongside layers of crooning harmonies can feel like the spring sun on your face. But Ugly’s folk pushes beyond that comfort. They slip between genres and place phonetics at the forefront of their songwriting, creating something more folkloric than straight folk. At times, it’s eerie and uncanny, and it’s this conjuration that makes their singles unite in Twice Around the Sun, supported by the similarly worshipful feel of shared vocals and layered harmonies. “It’s sort of a communal thing, which ties into the multiple voices singing at once, the unison thing that we do sometimes,” Goater says.

Perhaps that’s where the surprise lies for Goater and the rest of the sextet: in how a scattershot release resonated so clearly. There’s a comfort, it seems, in being understood more deeply than you expected – especially when you’re not aiming for a specific message in the first place. And although the band initially saw the EP as a stopgap, “we’ve been able to coast on it for longer than we thought, which has been nice,” Goater admits. “We’ve had a lot of wonderful opportunities, very welcome and kind praise, and a bit of freedom to figure out what we want to do next.”

The current Ugly sound – whimsical, off-kilter chamber-folk – emerged from the creative vacuum of lockdown. With everything on hold, the band had a space to turn inwards and check in. “It was like, alright, we’ve got some time, are we happy with where the band is? What do we want from it moving forward?” Goater explains, thinking even further back. That pause triggered a shift in their songwriting ethos, bringing the collective together more fervently. “Beforehand, it would be one person coming to the band with almost a fully fledged song… whereas now it’s all of us sitting in a room for a very long time, seeing what we can come up with.”

Naturally, that kind of process takes time. But it results in something rare: total transformation. “The group as a whole will take one person’s melody or one person’s idea and put it through the communal pot. And then that happens, however many times, for each part. So it becomes this weird chamber – things just swirling around.” The communal nature of that swirl means there’s sometimes friction too. “It took a long time to reach that point. It was a bit tense at times when we were first figuring it out. But where we’ve come to seems to be the way that makes the Ugly sound thing.” What we get is that very distinct sound, one that feels like it’s been dreamt into being – a collective memory, of sorts, replayed on stage and direct to your ears.

You can hear this dream logic all over their recordings. Tracks drift between dissonant harmonies and surreal images. When I ask about their penchant for nature-heavy themes and cryptic, chanting lyrics, Goater doesn’t try to over-intellectualise it. “These sort of images, for some reason, just fit into the words. Maybe it’s more of a subconscious thing than a conscious choice.” Sound often comes before meaning for Ugly, with words chosen more for their shape than their definition. “It’s music first and foremost. It’s only in the last stages that we figure out what it could actually be about,” Goater muses. “Probably just a part of the band’s psyche,” he finishes, with a laugh that’s perhaps a little too revealing.

This playful, meaning-later approach is what sets Ugly apart from other genre-agnostic bands working at the moment. Hear them chant “Chime-away-a-chime-a-sighner / Ha-bap-jay-day-boof-fürtiger” in “The Wheel”. Or “Isen, Adama, Ad afra” in “Icy Windy Sky”. The do-it-for-the-fun-of-it attitude opens the door to invention – and in their case, nonsense.

Glossolalia (the practice of ‘speaking in tongues’ or uttering only speech-like sounds) features throughout their work and comes up now in conversation. “I didn’t know that word. That’s a great word!” Goater grins. “We like to be playful in the things that we sing. If something sounds good phonetically, then we just make it a word, or make it some kind of charm.” It’s wonderful and weird and so very joyous as linguistic play takes precedence. Who thought that gibberish could become incantation?

You can hear this layered, lexical-forward sound in sharper focus in their latest single, “Next to Die”. Written some time ago and shaped on the road since the release of their EP, the track feels like a hinge point for the band, what Goater calls “a push-forward-into-spring song,” filled with endings, movement, and a “happy-sad” sensibility that clings to both clarity and chaos. It’s not necessarily a guide for where Ugly are headed next, but it’s an honest reflection of where they’ve been and what they’re still drawn to. A transitional song not just in its evocation of the changing seasons, but in the sense that something new is beginning to form.

That evolution is slow by design. Ugly don’t rush creative decisions, preferring instinct and interaction over external pressure. Their next album is on the way, though details are scarce. “It’s slightly rockier. It’s still got those classic Ugly elements. It’s sort of tongue-in-cheek, beautiful harmonies – the usual business,” Goater offers cautiously. Much of that direction has come not from studio work but from the stage: “Over the course of the last year, we’ve been road-testing new music... it’s kind of the only way to trial songs,” he explains. With the band currently out on the road, playing live gives their writing both a deadline and a shape. “You see what works, what doesn’t. It’s a good motivator.”

Looking ahead, there are no neat trajectories. Ugly’s path isn’t dictated by genre or marketability, but by this shared instinct and the slow churn of discovery. It’s this messiness, this willingness to be odd, patient, and trusting, that keeps the indie outfit constantly evolving as they continue on their rise. In a world hungry for clarity and quick returns, their kind of quiet confidence is its own kind of radical, a push against the rush and a nod towards the beauty found in the gradual, unforced bloom of something new.