#14 - Uffie - "dominoes"

Dec 16, 2022

I went to see Uffie live earlier this year as part of a Subculture event, mainly because I wanted to hear “Pop The Glock,” a proto-hyperpop banger from 2006 that glistens like holographic vinyl wrap. I ended up leaving before she played the song (maybe she never did), and the main memory I have of the night is a vague sense of being high and struggling to retrieve my Uniqlo jacket from the overstuffed coat check. But I also remember how carefree everyone in that dark, smoky, strobe-streaked room seemed as Uffie started playing—bodies hopping and arms flying.

A couple of months later, Uffie dropped Sunshine Factory, her first album in over a decade. I had no idea she hadn’t dropped for so long, nor that she was ramping up to release when I saw her perform. The first time I listened, I was halfway through a cross-country roadtrip and stuck in a New Music drought, and the tape hit like a tidal wave of neon energy. There were the sunbeam rhyme schemes of “where does the party go?” (pure Mad Libs chaos: marijuana, Nirvana, Obama..), the wandering woozy chill of “cool,” the delightful way her voice does a little sonic curtsy at the end of the refrain “think you're sweet, I got the juice” on “sophia.”

The highlight for me was always the Lokoy & Toro y Moi-produced “dominoes,” a flirty tickle of indie pop that sends a montage of moments hurling through my brain—evenings on the beach; eating perfectly ripe strawberries in the first days of summer; lying in a meadow surrounded by blooming flowers. I love the way Uffie dips between Italian and English in the line “do a dance a la adagio, till we fall like dominoes,” and the second layer of vocals underneath that sound like fairies hiccuping. The effortlessly blithe song gives me a similar feeling to the pleasure I get from saying the artist’s name, “Uffie.” It’s a cool breeze of a word; a pretty hill of light vowels, the uuh running up into the hard “ff,” then flying down with eee. A little intimate and playful, like giggling at a friend’s joke in class when you’re supposed to be silent.