Princess Ugly- We Knew It Was Perfect

ARTIST: Princess Ugly

ALBUM: We Knew It Was Perfect

LABEL: Emergent Records

REVIEWER: Matthew J.

DATE: 7-4-07

Princess Ugly's brand of moody, stony pop hearkens back to the early '90s brilliance of groups like Catherine Wheel and Slowdive, with fuzzy strums, slowly screeching guitars, and enough effects pedals to make everything just a little bit numb. Given J. Christopher-Rome's drawling sneer of a vocal style, it's hard not to make comparisons to Jesus And Mary Chain on opening song "Reasons Don't Know" and the subtle but sad "Take Everything And Leave," while "Sick" injects things with just enough of a psychedelic groove to bring to mind a more bummed out Stone Roses. "Bad Day" is unexpectedly pleasant in purely musical terms, more like a couple of painkillers taken for recreational purposes than to dull emotional agony, but the vaguely cheery pop guitars and dreamy female background vocals bely such blatantly depressive lyrics as "Today was a bad day / I wanted to stick a knife into my head." "Lock You Into Me," on the other hand, is about as close as Princess Ugly comes to a love song, and coincidentally sees the band at their most dissonant, with slow, metallic-sounding percussion and a mixture of clean and overdriven guitar strums that recalls Daniel Ash's work in late-period Bauhaus and early-period Love And Rockets. There's a mixture of blissed out arrangements and faintly sinister attitude on this CD that's a rarity in today's overly pretty shoegazer scene, and it gives Princess Ugly's songs a wonderful level of depth. Pick this one up if you're into the classic 4AD bands, not to mention Mazzy Star and Jesus And Mary Chain.

Visit Princess Ugly online at www.princessugly.com.