The Ugly Beats
Brand New Day
Get Hip
Bringing garage rock to Detroit is a little like transporting steel to Pittsburgh, potatoes to Idaho, or cuckoo clocks to Switzerland. We know how to do this stuff here. And yet Austin’s the Ugly Beats offer a 1960s swing-style approach that is, oddly enough, refreshingly different. There’s no fuzz and feedback; these guys (and one girl) favor a clean, harmony-filled sound that switches from power-pop to folk-rock in a heartbeat. The band, which has been around for 11 years, also prefers to write songs that are over just as you’re settling into them. Like Ramones, this album is packed with punchy, all-American pop-rock anthems, and there’s zero filler.
