Ugly Casanova

Ugly Casanova was a side project Isaac Brock used to front on and off in the late 90's into the early 00's. Whereas Eric Judy and Jeremiah Green tend to balance Brock's off the wall ideas in Modest Mouse, keeping them grounded in sharp alternative rock, Ugly Casanova was a place Brock could go buck wild. This was both good and bad. The band's only album, Sharpen Your Teeth, was a wacky backwoods cretin of an album. Fleshing out the band with collaborators like Holopaw's John Orth, Caifone's Paul Rutili, and The Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins, the album was an interesting mix of the pretty, and the pretty weird. While songs like "Cat Faces" (featuring a great dual vocal with Brock and Orth), and "Things I Don't Remember", soared with epic beauty, excessive experiments like "Diamonds On The Face Of Evil", and "Ice On The Sheets", were stuck in a holding pattern, using tribal repetition with no progression. From top to bottom though, Sharpen Your Teeth is a nice detour, and a closer look inside the minds of one of music's brightest and most interesting songwriters. Here is my favorite song off the record.