UFFIE AT CONCORDE 2, BRIGHTON « New music, features, reviews, news and free mp3s

With a band boasting seven live members you by rights expect to experience something above the norm. Sadly, tonight Midlake offers nothing but the norm.

LIVE REVIEW

Uffie

Concorde 2

Brighton

24/04/10

It’s been a long time coming but electro songstress Uffie is now teetering on the edge that separates people from being an underground hipster icon and being a mainstream household name. The transition is almost certain, her debut album release is imminent and it features enough high profile collaborations to get tongues talking, but tonight’s performance may have left many of her early embracers in mourning. Though the music remains true to its original cultured electro backing and her distinctive off kilter vocal flow enough that recent accusations proclaiming her as being the person whom Ke$ha stole the majority of her act from are almost justified; the stumbling block is her stage demeanour. Where once it was wild and unpredictable, it has now been toned down to such a level that it feels like she has recently graduated from a school for wannabe pop sirens – it’s both clichéd and tame. Flanked by a DJ on one side and a keytar player on the other it feels like she is going through the motions, rolling out one traditional move after another; even the RnB staple of perching on a stool for the duration of a song is not off-limits. The once credible face of hipster pop is reaching out for the mainstream.

By Nathan Westley

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Originally published in issue 17 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. May 2010