The Uglysuit (Bonus Track Version)

Album Review

There's certainly nothing ugly about the Uglysuit's debut album, whose nine songs veer between breezy indie pop, psychedelic folk, shoegaze, and flashes of laid-back math rock. That's an odd combination, to be sure, but the Uglysuit tackle their shifting time signatures without losing their mellow, a move that adds complexity while preserving the sunny California vibes these Midwesterners evoke so easily. Apart from straightforward pop songs like "Chicago," many of the album's tracks progress in movements, with "Everyone Now Has a Smile" (one of two seven-minute epics on the disc) shifting between ethereal piano arpeggios and a bouncing jam band breakdown. When the bandmates decide to really crank up the volume, as they do during the psych rock conclusion to "Happy Yellow Rainbow," the sound is more cathartic than jarring. It's difficult to carve one's own niche in the indie rock world — the genre is already congested with countless niches, most of them quite similar to the next one — but the Uglysuit have stumbled across something truly unique here. Alternately blissed-out and ragingly psychedelic, this debut is one of 2008's most promising records.