Ugly Casanova: Sharpen Your Teeth : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If Isaac Brock's side project is less cerebral than the bulk of his Modest Mouse output, it still boasts enough appeal to dazzle his loyal indie rock clientele. Sharpen Your Teeth, a one-off album for Sub Pop recorded as Ugly Casanova and realized with the aid of Red Red Meat and Black Heart Procession members, also possesses some of Brock's most direct material. Hopping from trippy, melodic, lo-fi rock ("Barnacles") to bluesy, Beck-like strums ("Spilled Milk Factory"), these players execute their sound with an easy, under-thought approach. Brock's lyrics are as winningly twisted as ever on "Parasites," when his cracked pipes -- atop yard-sale percussion and synthesized horns -- eek out lines like, "The parasites are excited when you're dead/Eyes bulging, entering your head." Amid a number of other standout tracks, including the recklessly upbeat "Things I Don't Remember," just one intolerable rock experiment can be found, called "Diamonds on the Face of Evil." Wrapping the record with the galactic and gorgeously teary "So Long to the Holidays," Brock and friends affirm that ugly can also be alluring.

JOHN D. LUERSSEN
(May 21, 2002)