Oct 27 2003
Ugly Casanova: Sharpen Your Teeth
Ugly Casanova photos taken by Thomas Campbell.
OTO Rating: 10/10
Beauty lurks in the strangest places and Ugly Casanova undoubtedly embodies this notion. Ugly Casanova is a side project for Isaac Brock, lead singer/songwriter of Modest Mouse. Other members to Ugly Casanova include Brian Deck & Tim Rutili from Red Red Meat & Califone, Paul Jenkins of Black Heart Procession and John Orth of Holopaw. When you break it down Ugly Casanova is more a super group than a side-project. But while a certain number of this audience no doubt has a good amount of the other band members’ records in their stacks, the real story is Isaac Brock.
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Track listing:
01 Barnacles 02 Spilled Milk Factory 03 Parasites 04 Hotcha Girls 05 (No Song) 06 Diamonds on the Face of Evil 07 Cat Faces 08 Ice on the Sheets 09 Beesting 10 Pacifico 11 Smoke Like Ribbons 12 Things I don’t Rememberbr> 13 So Long to the Holidays |
The Washington based band Modest Mouse first noticed Edgar Graham a.k.a. Ugly Casanova in the summer of 1998. They met when Graham stumbled up to Brock at a Modest Mouse show, still bleeding from where he’d cut himself sneaking in through a broken window. This meeting of disturbed minds yielded a weird musical kinship, the result of which eventually came to be Sharpen Your Teeth. Showing signs of psychological unevenness that endeared them to him, the trio invited Casanova to tour. While his talent was apparent, Grahams self-loathing and shame of his performances caused him to retreat into his own hellish psyche. By the end of the tour the members of MM convinced him into recording some of his songs. Reluctantly he agreed, then surprisingly vanished never to be seen again.
Sub Pop discovered the recordings one cold day amongst a pile of old boxes. After listening to the tapes, Sub Pop started the meticulous process of compiling and mastering the various contained tracks. Isaac Brock and Brian Deck, who also performed Casanova’s songs with a handful of collaborators, produced Sharpen Your Teeth. Even though Casanova performs on the record, as well as takes credit for the songs, he shares vocal duties with guest musicians on the majority of tracks.
Though Brock claims Ugly Casanova’s songs inspired Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica, the songs on Sharpen are different enough to mostly dispel any notions that Graham might be a fictional alter ego of Brock. There is some similarity in tone, in delivery, and in subject matter, but in both cases the sound, the instruments used and the feel of the albums are very different. The opener, “Barnacles,” has Brock referencing classic Rolling Stones amidst antisocial daydreams: “I don’t need to see/ I don’t see how you see/ Out of your window/ I don’t need to see, I’ll paint it black.” Amazingly, another highlight you may find yourself repeatedly chanting is “Parasites” that comes on like some postmortem parade, with blaring trumpets and Isaac morbidly insisting that “the parasites are excited when you’re dead/ Eyes bulging, entering your head/ And all your thoughts… THEY ROT!” The ghostly-pop of “Cat Faces” is beautiful and eloquent, a confident, yet shadowy song with the right amount of pop, a tender voice led by the gentle strumming of an acoustic guitar, all flushed out by the organ and slide guitar gliding through the song.
For something that is not unusual (front man going solo), Brock, with a cast of friends, delivers a tempestuous recording. Performed on banjo, guitar, mandolin, and a wide variety of percussive instruments, Sharpen Your Teeth is marked by a remarkable looseness in its approach and a heavy reliance on found noise and casual recording. The fact that the album is chock full of hauntingly beautiful songs and captivating narratives seem to owe as much to chance as to actual craftsmanship, but that element of planned casualness only adds to the beauty and intrigue of this impressive and hypnotic album.
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