Ugly Megan may be moving to Canada.

There is no bigger bombshell the Waterford-based duo could have dropped on our first meeting. As Orlando (guitars, vocals, and newly-bought MicroKorg) relayed the couple’s plans to move abroad for art college this summer I felt a distinct tearing pain in my chest. It’s akin to your fourth-class first crush moving to the school down the road as soon as you’d plucked up the courage to carry her bag home for her. Sure, she’ll have a better standard of education and she’ll be wearing a prettier school uniform but you can no longer gaze at her longingly across the maths book you share every friday. I have fallen head-over-heels in puppy love with Ugly Megan. I sleep with their songs rotating in my brain, I dream of each dreamy melody they’ve concocted, and sometimes I bring their photographs into the bath with me.

Being as addictive as Pokemon Silver, twee as a tea party, and wide-eyed as a coke-fuelled Bambi it would be all too easy to cast aspersions on the artistic viability of the Megans. Quite frankly, artistic viability can go fuck itself. Covering Snoop Dogg on nothing but an acoustic guitar and a Yamaha transcends art; it is, rather, utter genius. I can only imagine Ugly Megan pulling it off with such aplomb. Their hallmark breathy boy-girl vocals and simple melodies rework D Oh Double G to an undiscovered level of tweeness, though an unconscious tweeness at that. Being so prettily dressed, stumbling over their words onstage, and decking their tables out with plastic dinosaurs, toy cameras and fairy lights would be slightly nauseating if it were not so uncontrived. It helps that they spin off into bad-mouthed choruses in their songs. For every “I love you” there’s a “shake that ass bitch and let me see what you got”.

Having only known each other about a year, it’s compelling to watch how in-tune they are onstage. My first Ugly Megan experience was in the Back Loft, playing at a book launch for Oisin Byrne. The hall filled with new-age hippies and art fashionistas in equal measure, it was difficult to know how their set was going to go down. However, three songs in the dynamic had been established: a white-robed chorus of Mother Nature’s children danced around the band’s humble table, while the well-dressed kept a little more distance, but smiled and bopped heads appreciatively. It was overwhelmingly obvious that both Kathi and Orlando were crippilingly nervous, but somehow this only added to their charm. While they share indiscernable mutterings and shaky smiles in between songs, the actual tracks exude a confidence by contrast. Karl Mac used the Moldy Peaches as a touchstone for UM comparisons, and it’s an apt one. There is a Beat Happening simplicity and ramshackleness to their songs that they marry with an Arts & Crafts copyrighted dynamic that intermingles with their Kimya-and-Adam straight-up sincerity, however, that makes them that little more distinctive.

The second show was this week’s Casiotone For The Painfully Alone support slot. Having played Whelans on New Years night, supporting Jape (they chatter excitedly about meeting Richie Egan’s mum backstage) one might have expected a higher level of confidence returning to familiar territory. Not so. Kathi’s legs shake under the table, and Orlando avoids the gaze of the crowd, staring at his guitar throughout. Nevertheless, the reception is even more rapturous than before. Their “Fresh Prince Of Bel Air” cover is punctuated by whoops, and every song cheered swellingly immediately afterwards. Humbleness, said Margot Asquith, is the first element of greatness. It’s easy to understand then, what makes Ugly Megan so fucking fantastic.

But it’s all going to end soon. “Hopefully we’re leaving Ireland, but we’re definitely leaving Waterford.” Despite what they describe as “some amazing bands” cohabiting the county with them (such as Dae Kim, and Kathi’s own classmate’s Megan rap-dance project You’re Only Massive) there is as much merit in “playing in an alley with a few cans” as in their venues, populated by Stairway to Zeppelin the last time Orlando visited, and they are cursed to never play Cork thanks to over-zealous over-18s rule enforcement. If Canada does indeed call when the CAO results come out, I’ll be at the airport bidding a tearfilled goodbye.

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Daniel Gray Poser.
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