Ugly Motors - S/T

Ugly Motors are from Minneapolis and they describe what they do as 'shit-faced rock'. It's a pretty accurate description.

The difference between really really good garage bands and run-of-the-mill ones (and there are plenty of the matter) lies in how much they're willing to cede the floor to their guitars.  The guitarists can't ponce around, they can't show off and they can't pretend it's about them rather than the instruments.

 

In Ugly Motors, duelling guitarists Joe and Wade know this.  If they can play - and it sounds like they can - then thankfully they're the kind of fretwork manipulators who understand you've got to let the instruments have their say. In short, they come on not - thank God - as budding Carlos Santanas but as more what Santana might have sounded like if you'd cut off his fingers after the first album. There's struggle to be heard in these tunes, and out of it comes some of the most glorious garage rock I've heard in a long long time.  Lying on top of those guitars, Joe's vocals have that Kingsmen-esque mumbling quality which mean you can't hear exactly what he's singing about but you know it ain't pretty.

As for the tunes on their self-titled mini-album, 'Fart Party' isn't the sub-Queers festival of lavatorial humour you might expect from its title; rather it's how The Strokes might sound if they were any good. It's got a riff to die for, as has album closer - and, at four minutes-plus a veritable epic in this generally truncated company - 'Your Face Is A Door'. But the album's best riff is reserved for the two-minute slab of depravity that is 'Sexmother'. In fact, it's the best guitar riff of the year so far. I've played the track in my March Dandelion Radio Show, but secretly I'd love to have that descending guitar run as my theme tune, if I had one.

 

You can get this release from their bandcamp site.  It's name your price for the download, or you can get a cassette copy (hand made with hate and a dash of bourbon in every case, according to the band) for a minimum price of just $3.   Limited to thirty copies in this format, so you might want to get there quickly.