The Ugly Guys - Cover Your Tracks (2023) [Hi-Res]

Southend-based, UK Country quintet & purveyors of Cosmic Americana Music, The Ugly Guys released their three track, EP, 'Rolling in the Deep' on the Conquest Music label in June as an appetiser to their forthcoming album, Cover Your Tracks.

The lead track is such a skillful country-tinged cover of Adele's international chart-topper that you'd think the song was countryborn. It has received strong support at radio, and has set up the album release nicely. Cover Your Tracks brings us 15 great songs that have been given the cosmic country reinterpretation by The Ugly Guys. Writers as diverse as Bee Gees, Chuck Berry, John Hiatt & Mickey Jupp have been given the Ugly Guys treatment, resulting in a delightful collection of brilliant songs presented complete with Pedal Steel Guitar, Mandolin, Banjo and Paul Shuttleworth's distinctive vocals.

The founder members of 'The Ugly Guys' -- Paul Shuttleworth and Vic Collins -- have been making music together since 1969, when they founded one of England's first country rock bands Cow Pie. Paul and Vic went on to form The Kursaal Flyers in 1972 and were an integral part of the 'Pub Rock' scene that was flourishing in the UK at that time. The Kursaals were one of the few bands to break out of the pub rock scene when in 1977 they enjoyed a UK Top 20-hit single with their Phil Spectoresque pastiche 'Little Does She Know'. Fast forward to 2003, when a chance meeting led Paul and Vic to explore the prospect of forming a new band to play the cosmic country music they both loved. A call to guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Steve Oliver quickly formed the nucleus of the new band, which they named The Ugly Guys, taking the moniker from a much-loved Kursaal Flyers song.