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Mar 05, 2025 Web Exclusive By Mark Moody

Pick whichever of your senses you like, but suffice it to say that Fust’s Big Ugly smells like a breakout. The Aaron Dowdy led band returns to the recording studio with producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, MJ Lenderman), who was on board for 2023’s gentler Genevieve, and comes up aces on a near dozen alt-country stunners. The album hearkens to the late ’80s/early ’90s classic era of the genre where big guitars, thoughtful lyrics, and fail-safe melodies prevailed. Think The Silo’s Cuba, The Jayhawk’s Tomorrow the Green Grass, or Uncle Tupelo’s woolier early albums.

The songs here, populated with characters pulled from the banks of West Virginia’s Guyandotte River, feel shopworn and road tested. A testament to the veteran musicians on hand—Justin Morris (Sluice), Libby Rodenbough (Mipso), Oliver Child-Lanning (Weirs)—but also Dowdy’s song craft. The imagery of the title song holds the impact of the opening chapter of a Faulkner novel in a few short lines: “They’ll have to haul me off, off a down slope, in some front end loader, in a pine box.” One of Big Ugly’s starker and stripped down songs, but the presentation lets Dowdy’s story shine through. On the flip side, the opening track bluster of “Spangled” showcases the band full bore and sing-along tested.

One of Big Ugly’s fullest blooms comes on the interplay between Dowdy, Rodenbough’s fiddle and Avery Sullivan’s drums on “Doghole.” The song explores both the decay and latent beauty of rural communities and their remote hollers. Thematically sharing a bit of the backwater nostalgia of John Prine’s “Paradise,” which was wiped away by the Peabody Coal company, “Doghole” pines for places gone or going. “My family used to get down there, worked for Union Carbide, it ain’t much to look at but it’s a place beyond the hillside,” Dowdy sings as Rodenbough’s fiddle line gently subsumes the song’s melody.

Bigger moments like the Drive-By Truckers-ish “Mountain Language” or pulsing “Goat House Blues” are interspersed with softer moments like the slow to simmer “What’s His Name.” The latter is sprinkled with Frank Meadow’s piano, which supports an understated duet between Dowdy and Merce Lemon. Sure to catch the ear of fans of some of the household names that Farrar has already produced, Big Ugly is the real deal and is sure to be a constant companion for a myriad of backroad rambles and highway drives. (www.fust.band)

Author rating: 8.5/10