The vocoder was a great invention in that it opened up vast new textural horizons for the human voice to be manipulated toward, from robotic mechanisation to celestial choirs. To use a single vocoder sound across an entire album of lead vocal is rather counter-productive to say the least and is indicative of the problems at the root of United State of Electronica, the album from Seattle based U.S.E. which finally sees an Australian release nearly two years after its initial birth.
The band play a fairly straight-up brand of electro-rock. There’s no doubt that, in four minute doses, they can be quite infectious. Opener, ‘It Is On!’ is an obvious indie-dance style anthem – big drums, crowd chant backing vocals, lyrical call-to-dancefloor-arms – followed in a similar fashion by their ode to their very own hometown “summer of love” in ‘Emerald City’. But those few ideas can only stretch so far, particularly in the current musical climate where every second indie band is keen to push their particular shade of nu-rave-new-wave. One too many harmony guitar riffs over diminished chords undermine the energy the disco drums are trying to create. A lack of production variety, always exacerbated by that vocoder setting that just won’t budge, produces ever diminishing returns as the album progresses.
In the end it comes off as a band unable to transcend their influences. It’s a case of “There’s the Daft Punk bit! There’s the Scissor Sisters bit! Here’s the Junior Senior bit!!” that ultimately ends up sounding like the kind of thing advertising executives might ask their in-house music teams to come up with for their hip new advertising campaign.
Adrian Elmer
*
