Photo by Jessi Paetzke
There are six members in Ugly Brothers, but seeing them live you could be forgiven for thinking there are nine or 10 of them. The Milwaukee group performs with a sort of jovial rowdiness (or some might call it an over-eagerness) that makes the stage seem much smaller than it actually is. Their shows are a flurry of motion, all stabbed cellos and violins and zealously strummed guitar and mandolin strings. Elbows fly everywhere. Each member seems eager to upstage the other, yet they each also seem to delight in having their toes stepped on.
“I don’t think we’re the most polished band you’ll ever see,” singer and multi-instrumentalist Alex Shah admits. “But we like it that way. We like to maintain a punk sensibility when we play live.”
That live approach posed a challenge when Ugly Brothers entered the studio, though. The same disorder that’s so charming to witness on stage would just scan as noise on a record. So for their full-length debut 16 Tiny Mountains, out Aug. 12, they had to find a balance between preserving the joy and spontaneity of their live show, while employing some restraint. The result is kind of a revelation. Without everybody playing over each other you can hear how sweet the underlying songs are. Beautiful orchestrated passages share room with cathartic outbursts.
Credit the band’s lineup for that balance. Shah shares songwriting duties with his brother, Palmer, who contributes some of the record’s more ornate moments. “I have a tendency to write songs faster, and usually on a much more emotional basis—they’re the song equivalents of shouting into your pillow,” Alex explains. “But Palmer likes to take his time. He can take six months to a year crafting a song.”
16 Tiny Mountains was recorded in the dead of winter, and it sounds like it. The band tracked the album in a frigid Bay View warehouse last January, huddling under blankets and around electric heaters between takes, and winter’s grip casts a shadow over the lyrics. The waltzing folk tune “Rabbit” best captures the sense of social isolation that comes with the cold weather. “If someone stopped to ask me where I’d really like to go / Well, I’d say anywhere away from snow,” the band sings.
Even on the album’s most remorseful songs, however, a sense of uplift comes across. These songs are sad on paper, but they’re joyful in execution. “We’ve been criticized before for appearing to be too happy when we play live, and that’s something you want to be a little wary of when you’re writing songs,” Alex says. “I feel like there’s not a lot of weight to an unbearably happy song, so I’m drawn to sad ones, but at the same time you want a little movement in them. They can’t just be soaked in turmoil.”
The irony of releasing a record about winter during the hottest stretch of summer isn’t lost on Alex, but after a year and a half of delays, he’s just happy to have it out at all. And it could be the band’s last for a while. Though he says the group has written another album’s worth of material, their future is up in the air right now. Palmer is moving to Green Bay, and, his brother says, “We can’t continue as Ugly Brothers without him.” That means the band’s performance as part of Milwaukee’s inaugural Fringe Festival later this month could be their last for quite a while.
“I know we’re all going to continue playing music, and I think we’ll do something together in some form or another,” Alex says. “There’s a good chance we’ll get to perform those new songs eventually.”
Ugly Brothers play the Milwaukee Fringe Festival’s free outdoor music stage in Pere Marquette Park on Sunday, Aug. 28 at 6 p.m. 16 Tiny Mountains is streaming at http://uglybrothers.bandcamp.com.
