Sunshine Factory

Uffie

'What ever happened to Uffie?'' is probably a question literally no one asked in the twelve years since she released her debut Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans. Unless I'm grossly misremembering, Uffie seemed to garner quite a bit of hate for her trashy take on dance club anthems. Stream of consciousness lyrics unceremoniously spilled over house instrumentals; the concept of 'anti-flow,' a term that was quite new to me at the time, was used to describe Uffie's approach to rapping. The singing was not that spectacular either as her thin voice was not really strong enough to carry a tune, even after various effects were applied. I did really enjoy one track from this record, the final single Difficult. I enjoyed the oppressively compressed instrumental with it's upright piano sample, the 'difficult' vocal sample, and even though I recognize that the sung rap performance is not the strongest, it had an endearing quality. I just found the track to be supremely catchy and it has stayed in rotation ever since I first came across it. From my perspective, Uffie just up and disappeared afterwards, hence why seeing her name pop up twelve years later generated surprise and intrigue.

Sunshine Factory sees Uffie going in a bit of a different direction than her debut. With snappy bass lines, funkier synths and organs, there appears to be a heavy dance-punk influence that is melding with Uffie's house sensibilities; reminding me a great deal of groups like LCD Soundsystem. Uffie is also focusing more on singing as opposed to rapping, and even though her voice is still not very strong, I think the dance-punk direction does more to compliment her performances. Uffie puts her best foot forward with mvp, a cutesy ode to a lover with soaring tremolo guitars and baby'd vocal hooks. There's just something about this track I find very catchy and fun. where does the party go? busts in afterwards with a fairly strong groove. I like the radio-band effect on Uffie's vocals and the eccentric way she delivers "I gave you facts, on the wax, babe relax!" adds an element of 'laissez-faire' that is pretty disarming. I also liked the overblown electro-rock of prickling skin, especially for those chorus vocals. The melody may be stiff, but Uffie I think has never sounded more alive. And surprisingly, despite its tendency to come off a little asinine and monotonous, I can't help but wiggle awkwardly to the ear-worm bass melody on cool.

There's a great deal of material here that is quite enjoyable, but that doesn't mean Sunshine Factory isn't without it's flaws. I'm a little torn on sophia as I do really like the groove of this instrumental, especially when those staccato synths make an appearance. However, the sung vocals on this track are some of the weakest on the whole record; failing to deliver a decent vocal melody and failing even harder singing it in key. a month of mondays I enjoyed even less for its absolutely awful 'pop pop pop' hook. I also wasn't too crazy about the final track on the record, crowdsurfinginyoursheets. It's a tender ballad that unfortunately further proves that Uffie's voice can't really support a tune like this. Other than these three tracks though, Sunshine Factory is actually a pretty decent and fun pop record. Nothing mind-blowing, but I certainly didn't expect it to be as good as it was. I'll be interested to see how Uffie builds off this release. Will she continue to push forward, or is this a one-off project, meaning we will likely not hear from her until the next decade? I guess we shall see.