Ugh by Harry the Nightgown

Ugh is a cry of frustration: you’ve been trying and it’s not working out. Five years after their self-titled debut, electronic avant-pop outfit Harry the Nightgown embrace failure on their most maximalist, bittersweet record yet. Ugh, their latest eleven-song offering out June 6th on Leaving Records, is an exercise in freaked-out perfectionism — sighing and grinding to reveal a degree of care rooted, perhaps, more in exasperation than in self-possession.

Now a trio, original members Spencer Hartling — solo artist tp Dutchkiss, experimental producer and founder of Wiggle World studio — and Sami Perez — of The She’s and Jerry Paper — are joined by east coast basement DIY harmonic theory whiz Luke Macdonald, who also tours with Sami in the band Cherry Glazerr. It’s a restless connection; on Ugh, nothing’s settled for. Cue record opener, “Bell Boy” — chopped hardware jitters and twinkles against Perez’s delivery, ranging between pensive, mean and bashful, yet somehow, surprisingly, it all contorts together into warbling harmony. Anxiety never sounded so dazzling.

Supplementing earlier releases’ analog shenanigans with uncompromising digital recording meticulousness, Ugh bears witness to an unresigned, painstaking approach to songcraft. Each chord voicing and synth patch took time; Ugh even incorporates progressions Macdonald came up with way back in high school. A manic document of digital recording experimentalism, its outsized soundscapes — grooved up and dubbed out; sharp as ever, yet littered with recording artefacts — are omnivorous. Breakup bossanovas alternate into paranoid hyperballads; horns and strings chop into ambient techno beats. Yet Harry the Nightgown never give in, rattling it all into shape to craft real pop songs out of jagged palettes.

Such an eclectic record, of course, could only be the result of teamwork. No matter how personal it may get on Ugh, its frustrations are emphatically communal: a whole network of friends and collaborators pieced these massive sounds together at Hartling’s Wiggle World studio in Altadena, home to a circle of forward-thinking experimentalists which includes the likes of Qu’ran Shaheed and Colloboh. After all, Ugh is a family affair: it was Hartling’s mom that introduced Macdonald to the band after the two formed a friendship volunteering with a local mutual aid org

As the songs on Ugh work through such tight-knit entanglements, Harry the Nightgown twinkle and wobble and lash out. It’s a bittersweet reminder: it takes so much effort to stay with the problem. Yet, at last, they pull it all off, their perfected pop craftsmanship taking us to a surprisingly intimate place of earnestness. It’s okay to cry over spilled milk, if it sounds like this in the end.