UHF - All Our Golden Tomorrows

Portland, Oregon’s UHF is often categorized as psychedelic, and it is true that the band has drawn a lot of inspiration from psychedelic-era Beatles records. And there are gobs of delays and other guitar effects, too. But if you’re worried about having your mind blown or having a flashback triggered, you’re probably safe. UHF has applied a veneer of psychedelia trappings to their songs, but not the unpredictable, anything-goes aspect of psychedelic rock. No, UHF plays such boring and predictable pop it’s almost the opposite of psychedelic. Once you’ve heard the first couple of moments of any of the eleven tracks on All Our Golden Tomorrows, you’ve heard it all. There’s nothing musically risky on this album; everything is well-worn pop constructs. The dullness is compounded by the fact that most tracks are over four minutes long. That’s pretty long when you’ve figured out the song’s trajectory after the first twenty seconds. Not surprisingly for a band named UHF, they seem to have a fascination with technology. Imagery used on both the packaging (the record cover features a giant cable rising out of the ocean and plugging into an outlet on the beach) and within the lyrics keep hammering away at technology metaphors, like the opening track, “Disconnect”: …I wanna disconnect/ I wanna go direct/Straight into your head/ I wanna pull the plug out/ I wanna cast some doubt/ Before it all goes dead. But you would think that naming your band something like UHF would give a hint of the sound of the music; that it would convey the white noise and bleeding reception of that medium. My Bloody Valentine or The Jesus and Mary Chain’s "Psychocandy” could have been appropriately called UHF, for example. But UHF’s music shares no resemblance to their namesake. UHF is over-produced, slick and boring pop. A more apt name would be…hmmm, let’s see, how about “Basic Cable”? [www.uhfweb.com]