Ugly
Words by Alicia Tomkinson, Photographs by Rosie Carne
Breaking out into London’s bustling music scene, after originally residing in Cambridge, the post-rock, punk outfit Ugly share their boisterous character development since beginning the band at the ripe age of 17. Bunched together are Harrison Jones (guitar), Tom Lane (synth & vocals), Harry Shapiro (bass & vocals), Jasmine Miller- Sauchella (keys & vocals), Theo Guttenplan (drums), and Samuel Goater (guitar & vocals).
Disguised to be a beautifully sunny Sunday morning at Kensington Gardens, the wonderful Rosie Carne and I are battling away intense waves of hay fever attacks from our weeping eyes. A sure way to always make a great first impression is to look like you’ve been watching Marley & Me three times before leaving the house, but hey ho, no one seemed to mind. One by one, the members of Ugly appear. I was starting to feel like that teaching assistant on school trips who holds the register, regularly shouting out “have we got everyone?” because there are that bloody many of them. Alas, I’d successfully gathered the troops and we headed off to the nearby café, following all the cute dogs in our sights.
I know I said before that it was a sunny morning, but I wasn’t lying when I mentioned the word ‘disguised’, because it was fucking freezing. As drinks were grabbed from a very rusty coffee shack that had more workers than customers, we squeezed all eight of us onto one bench, in a desperate attempt to combat the wind. And I must say, it was rather successful. Before beginning my ‘intense’ list of questions, I reminded the group that this will not be your typical interview, and that here at Groupie, the funkier the answer the better. Something that went down like a lump of lead.
Starting easy with, “have you ever had that awkward encounter of someone coming over to you saying, ‘You’re Ugly?’ but for a second you’ve forgotten that’s your band name?” I saw them beginning to realise what I meant when I said this wouldn’t be normal. After chuckles subside, Sam takes the reins being the day’s first speaker, he says, “Ah! I see what you did there.” 10 plus banter points to Alicia, please. Pushing further on the name he comments, “It was just one in the hat, we were kind of spitballing...” which immediately grabs the attention of the rest of the table to contest his use of the word “spitballing” before he continued, “it was short and catchy.” “And stolen from the American band,” chimed Theo. “No, it was not!” retorted Sam. Little did they know, at this point, this factoid was something I had come across when intensely stalking the band before this interview, that the amount of other ‘Ugly’ bands out there is rife! This sparked a conversation about who is the true domain name owner, which humbly the UK team claims proud ownership of. “But yeah, we were like 17 at the time”, Sam rounded up but didn’t get away easily before the rest of the group hounds on him again for sounding like he said 70 instead.
In case you couldn’t already tell, this questioning everything each member says continues like this for the whole interview, which I suppose in a group of six, is something to expect. However, I was beginning to see plainly that with every individual personality involved, there is another member who is sat ready to immediately shut the other down or turn anything mentioned into a laugh. I was in for a memorable day. “Would you say that the personality you showcase in your live performances and recordings, is true to how you are in day-to-day life?” I ask, Sam began again, “I think we do convey some parts of our personality in the music, and especially in the recording process when it’s slightly more experimental and we’re throwing in ad-libs left right and centre. All these things help us develop more, vocal-wise.” “I would say our humour comes through more than anything, a lot of banter’s going on behind the scenes. We like to think we’re hilarious by doing loads of weird things”. “But it’s just not funny,” Tom remarked. “On one of the tracks on the EP, we had to completely cut out the end of it because Tom, Harry and Jasmine did this weird instrumental bit with sounds like, I don’t even know how to describe it, weird Northern noises.” “Voldemort stuff?” pointed out Tom, before the rest of the table eagerly shut him down. It was obvious that this is not something they wish to discuss with me, no matter how hard I push. I was presuming that they don’t all live together, frankly because it would be chaos, but “if you had to all live together, who would be the first to leave Ugly?” I pursued, so that we didn’t start talking about Harry Potter.
“Well, if we did, we’d need a games room.” “A snooker table!” Theo erupted. “It would have to be a large mansion for this to work.” As it stood, no one was intimidated enough to leave. “We went away to Ely recently and we were all cooking for each other which was really nice,” Tom carried on. “Right, but it was a bit close quarter.” Harry butted in. “I mean, yeah it was but there were no BLAZING arguments, some tensions here and there but nothing physical.” Before long, we were chatting about what everyone’s favourite dishes were on this trip away, who was a successful chef that weekend and who sadly wasn’t. Almost like a very close- to-home version of Come Dine With Me, without the explosive quarrels of who’s won at the end, or so they tell me. “What’s the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen?” I let myself blurt out next, and before they could answer, they sought clarification on whether I said “seen”, or “sin”. The classic Southerner mocks Northerner accent skit coming out here. It would seem that they weren’t expecting this question for the first time this morning, the group is actually having to think on this one. “Well, you don’t wanna talk about people here,” Jasmine pointed out, as they all begin to give each other the eye as if to say, “I swear to God you better not say my name.” “That would be pretty peak. But I suppose it depends on what you’re looking at, anything could be ugly if you put a spin on it.” “What’s the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen?” Harry deflects aimlessly, which to match their efforts, I should have probably thought of an answer to this question prior too.
“Have you seen on TikTok those World’s Ugliest Dog competitions? There was a winner in 2023 called Scooter, I’d probably say that,” I shoot back with a lot of ums and ahhs in agreement with me. I think I got away with it.
As we wrapped up discussing more ugly things, whether ‘Hands of Man’ is based on a real pair of hands, and who has the biggest hands in the band, (depending on span or length we could argue both causes for Tom and Harry here), we headed off further into Kensington Gardens for the days shoot. After the band had pranced around at the whim of our dearest Rosie, it was done, and they were gone.
