UFO Hawaii might just be the most apt band name I have heard in a while. Actually hailing from Berlin, Germany, UFO Hawaii nonetheless channels a laid back aesthetic full of a lazy, humid Hawaiian warmth. This is shot through, however, with a disorientated and paranoid otherworldliness.
Against slowly looping drums, guitars weave their way around keys, sliding past us like we are enclosed within our own flying saucer. Lyrics flow, deadpan in their delivery, like a stream of consciousness. These are snapshots of scenes and thoughts, but their delivery is surprisingly vivid, with moments, like ‘I've had enough of standin’ here in line, Central Park bridge, waiting for that bitch’. Who is ‘that bitch’, and what is meant by the similarly evocative line ‘a new economy is hitting my veins’? An addiction of a more financial nature, perhaps, but it is hard to know, and perhaps that is the point.
Overall, UFO Hawaii’s New School is a weird, disorientated piece of dream pop that refuses to submit to any desire for clarity or specific meaning, and instead embraces you in its weird grip. It is a woozy experience, and yet a reassuringly peaceful one.