After years of stalking every bar, club, concert, and fetish party in Palm Beach County, regaling unsuspecting crowds with stream-of-semiconsciousness poetics, the guy formerly known as "just Timb" made the obvious move and rechristened himself with the U word. Chances are, you've seen this leather-wrapped, rainbow-tressed, living manga moppet, either solo acousticising or rocking a little harder with his Band of Erics.
The truth is, the Ube's moniker refers as much to his musical catch-all-ism as to his physical presence. Social Anxiety is his what, fifth? sixth? self-released album of solo bedroom recordings, goony, genuinely funny musings that veer from sneering grunge punk to junk-funk hip-hop to falsetto folk strummers. If the sheer breadth of styles doesn't rev your engine, the sharply written content will.
"Major Arranger" starts the album off with a faux-Brit Notney accent smooshed under fedback guitars and a loping beat. It's a total headfake, thankfully, lacking the unobstructed cleverness found on more stripped-down numbers like "Henry Rollins" and the lightly James Browned breaks of "Midas Touch." "The Sequel," a short ditty about the consistent disappointment of sequels, gets a sequel in "The Sequel, Part 2," and with "Clone Envy," Timb delves into the metaphysical mystery lurking within his genes: "So I'll make a clone/With my Y chromosome/And then I can stay home/While I go out to eat." The cornerstone here is the semi-straightforward narrative of "Standing in an Open Parking Lot With Penis in My Hand," a brilliant, Beck-ish ramble about a former roommate and linguistic genius who's enamored of the f bomb. The song and others on Anxiety reveals Timb as the real budding genius here, a wordful tunesmith who makes being everywhere at once look all too easy. Find out more at
Find everything you're looking for in your city
Find the best happy hour deals in your city
Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%
Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city
