Album Review: UFO by Need New Body

Lately, I've been getting somewhat desperate in terms of music that I latch onto. It's less that any song that's downright catchy leads me on an epic search for the rest of that artist's efforts, but more that if a song by a random artist, unbeknownst to me, that I've never heard of before suddenly enters my world at full force and I find it impossible to drive it out, that I search out the rest of what whoever that may be has to offer.

And this is what led me to Need New Body.

Backstory time! A few weeks back, Anthony Fantano (better known as "theneedledrop") did an online DJ set on turntable.fm. Curious as to what he would play, I dropped by for a few minutes and listened in. Aside from a familiar song from Minor Threat, I had never heard any of what Fantano played on that show before. And none of it really seemed to grab me. With the exception of one deceptively, insanely catchy song that is the epitome of an ear worm.

This song, with its unbelievable combination of electronica, banjo, strings, gypsy rock, and Frank Black-esque vocals, stuck with me for a long, long time. It was my go-to song when bored and unable to find a song. It became a musical drug unlike any other, the urge to return to it so strong I couldn't resist its charms for more than a day. And, more than anything else, it became a musical quandary unlike any other.

I believe that, if you try hard enough, you can categorize any music into genres. This isn't necessarily a good thing (lumping multiple things that only vaguely sounds like each other into the same field, yada yada), but it helps those lost in the myriad of music available at one's fingertips. Here, however, was the first time I've been unable to come up with a genre that even remotely describes that song above. The group's Wikipedia page described them as "avant-garde," but avant-garde music isn't this... catchy. Or this compulsively danceable.

It eventually drove me so obsessively insane that I had no choice but to seek out the full album. And, may I say, that "avant-garde" label certainly fits UFO as a whole.

The opening track, Giggle Bush Meets CompUSA, is a clear indicator of what you're getting yourself into: what begins as a simple melody devolves into a series of crazy bleeps and bloops that is too sudden to even call jarring. It's jagged in every sense of the word, but funny for how long it ends up going on. But, then, we get one of the most compelling tracks of the album, Hot Shot. After a squawky start, there's an incredibly simple yet delirious banjo(?) part that acts as the song's central melody. And, if you didn't realize from the previous track that the group has a crazy sense of humor, the track here fades before the melody is hilariously shouted at the top of the vocalist's lungs and the instrumentation lankily comes back into play. Suffice it to say, it's one of the more cohesive and noteworthy tracks on the album.

Since there are 23 songs on this album and many of them never evolve past simple ideas, I'll touch on the ones worth mentioning instead of doing my typical track-by-track business.

Let's start with the good. The main "single"(?) of the album is Beach, a ridiculous, parodical anthem for the oft-implemented setting in the same vein as America, Fuck Yeah (despite being released a year before that song, with the ubiquity of the latter, the comparison is inevitable). No, really.

That list towards the middle of the song should set off some bells of familiarity in those of you who have heard America, Fuck Yeah. The fact that it concludes with "Race wars/I'm hanging out/The youth will rule/O.D./Totally/Awesome" should tip off anyone who hasn't spotted that by this point. Also, I will forever be compelled to randomly yell out "Robfish!" whenever anyone ever mentions a pufferfish ever again.

Red as a Bone is completely uninteresting musically, but notable for its droning recitation of a list that goes on for nearly four minutes, essentially a musical representation of the cake sphere from Portal. So, why is this mentioned in the "good" section of the review? Merely for the last 30 seconds, which shrugs off the length of the song in an overacted manner. Ox also sounds boring on paper; it's a single running melody that continually stops and starts back up again, but, for whatever reason, works and never gets boring. Perhaps it's due to the progressing instrumentation that overlays it approximately halfway into the track (something that the horribly dull two-minute-long I Know lacks).

Pow Pow gets by mostly on sheer diversity and its odd combination of elements, packing in a xylophone fill, low bass tones, a piano line and simple vocals in a minute and a half. Shark Attack is a compelling mix of hammer-ons and pull-offs and a constant "One! Two! Three!" shout that is one of the more exciting and memorable tracks. And, speaking of memorable, Pen hits the mark for its incredibly catchy chorus ("Pen, pen, pen/Where's my pen?") and darkly comedic verses about the pen's connection to the narrator's relatives (including a sick grandma and a cousin with one arm).

But, if there's one song worth mentioning over all others, it's Show Me Your Heart. If you listened to the link up above, you know why this song caught my attention and urged me to listen to the whole album. Its hybrid approach to numerous styles, humorous lyrics, memorable vocals, and overall completeness (more so than practically every other song on the album) is a near-perfect array of obtuseness. And, if the rest of the album was as fleshed out as this song, perhaps I'd like it more than I do.

This is due to the fact that, as you may have guessed from my description of the album, so many songs (if you can call them that) simply exist as brief ideas or interludes and are never fleshed out beyond their simplest concepts. This would be fine if they served simply as bridges between two fully developed songs, but, more often than not, they just lead into yet another bizarre yet brief track. After a while, the constant detours into acoustic ballads (Moondear), piano stings (Make Gay Love Not War, Coffee Shop Girl, Pt. 2), banjo music (Magic Finger), radio parodies (Dr. Spliffin's Food Drive), and feedback (Apple Snake) make the relief of a full-fledged, honest-to-God song that much more worthwhile. These diversions then cease to be amusing or interesting, instead dragging out the album beyond it's necessary threshold of tolerability. I know that this album was made with a "kitchen sink" mentality, but sometimes less is more and the fat needs to be trimmed.

Which brings me to the album's lowest point, only four tracks in. Popfest is banality incarnate: a simple bass line, a single line of lyrics, and random distortion for nearly three minutes before the distortion grows without becoming any more immediate or frantic. It meanders, it lingers, and makes me pine for the dull yet brief oddities that pepper the rest of the album.

Unlike the opening track, which has the element of surprise in its favor, closing song Turns Pillars Into Trees is a disappointing slinky bass line that just suddenly ends. And that's it. That's the end of the album.

"Frustrated" is the best way to describe my reaction to UFO. Based on my initial love of Show Me Your Heart and how much I enjoy the tracks that I ended up liking, I wanted, and was, in fact, quite ready to embrace the weirdness I was prepared to hear. What disappointed me was how boring most of it ended up sounding. Even after only one listen through, I found myself more compelled to revisit individual songs rather than the album as a whole, which speaks negatively to the album's overall smooth flow. Yet, if there's one thing I can take away from this album, it's that it certainly traversed the a wide range, in its genres and styles definitely, but more prominently in quality, from the excellent to the dull to (more often than anything else) the mediocre.

Best Songs: Show Me Your Heart, Hot Shot, Beach
Worst Songs: Popfest, Turn Pillars Into Trees, I Know