As follow-ups to chart-topping albums go, Ugly begins in pretty uncompromising style. True, opener Yum commences with lyrics that lean towards the kind of positive personal affirmations that now proliferate in pop, lines you could imagine being belted out over a big power-ballad chorus: “You are great, you are good, you’re a king, you’re a queen, you’re a genius.” But their message of self-love is undercut by the rest of the track: an unsettling synth tone that becomes more percussive and relentless, the sound of someone breathing in the gasping, heaving manner of a panic attack. The electronics intensify, then resolve into something resembling a house pulse, punctuated by voices screaming and whimpering, and more panic-attack breathing. The lyrics keep shifting, throwing out descriptions of a futile visit to a therapist, howled litanies of mindless hedonism, the saga of Slowthai’s misadventures with Viagra – “I took a blue pill and I lost composure”, apparently – and lines that might sound celebratory if they weren’t being shouted in a distressed yelp: “Smoking weed, singing Lauryn Hill, any bad vibes and they’re gonna get killed.” Then it collapses entirely, consumed by bursts of jarring, arrhythmic noise. End of track one.
