Uffie Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans (Because)
2/5
By: Rachel Bolland
When the nu-rave/electro thing hit in 2006/7 I was the perfect age to be swept up in it all. At 16, I was still desperately trying to find some pathetic way to define myself, and being a slight NME devotee (or NME whore, your choice) I was inclined to go with whatever was going on at the time. I’d briefly tried emo before realising that I was really a bit too optimistic to properly pull it off. Then ‘nu-rave’ came along. It was bright, it was loud and my upbringing had been too sheltered to realise that the whole thing revolved around MDMA. So I purchased a stupid amount of neon clothing and painted my nails bright green. So I looked like a twat, part 1 was successful.
The only problem was, as much as I pretended that I loved those tinny beats, I thought most of the music was fucking awful. Eventually I discovered folk and settled down and while I didn’t hate all of it (Justice live was genuinely euphoric), the artist that epitomized the hateful, attention-seeking side of that scene, was Uffie.
And lo-and-behold, she’s back. After exploding on to people’s radars in 2006 with ‘Pop the Glock’ and its B-side, ‘Ready to Uff’, there was promise of an actual real-life album to follow up these introductory, blog-friendly tunes. Unfortunately this hasn’t materialised until now, almost four years down the line and into a world that, frankly, seems to find it hard to care. Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans actually opens with ‘Pop the Glock’ a track so tired that it makes you wonder if it’s really worth persevering through the other 13 tracks that she’s stuck on there.
The time that Uffie has been on hiatus has given rise to a new breed of in-your-face, eccentric female pop stars. What may have sounded fresh in 2006/7 now seems old hat with the likes of Lady Gaga and Ke$ha storming the charts - ‘Art It Uff’ bears similarities to the latter’s faux rap style of delivery.
Other tracks (notably ‘Give it Away’ and ‘Illusion of Love’) seem to be aiming to hit the same kind of unconventional pop that Ms Gaga has achieved so wonderfully with tracks like ‘Bad Romance’ and has shaken up the mainstream idea of what makes a successful pop song. Uffie’s won’t do that. Every song on ‘Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans’ sadly seems to lack something. The rap numbers lack credibility, the electro ones lack conviction and the pop ones lack style. Indeed, the entire album is missing anything to make the listener warm to her or anything to make them care, which makes it an obscenely difficult listen.
Artists in this article: Uffie
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