Settling on a single style has never been part of Ruban Nielson's vision for the ever-morphing sound of his long-running project Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The group emerged in the early 2010s as a neo-psychedelic indie rock band with hints of garage grit in its home-recorded production, but Nielson and his collaborators quickly ventured off that path to explore dream-like funk, reconfigurations of '70s soft rock, dramatic hard rock, experimental electronics, and much more. Fifth album (as well as their first double-album ...
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Settling on a single style has never been part of Ruban Nielson's vision for the ever-morphing sound of his long-running project Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The group emerged in the early 2010s as a neo-psychedelic indie rock band with hints of garage grit in its home-recorded production, but Nielson and his collaborators quickly ventured off that path to explore dream-like funk, reconfigurations of '70s soft rock, dramatic hard rock, experimental electronics, and much more. Fifth album (as well as their first double-album statement) V includes all of this and then some, at times shifting stylistic gears mid-song before flitting on to a different muse altogether by the time the next tune starts. Recorded over the course of several years in the tropical climes of both Palm Springs and Hawaii, V is held together by sounds influenced by the environment it was created in. Apart from breezy tunes with titles like "The Garden," "The Beach," or "Keaukaha" (the name of a neighborhood in Hilo, Hawaii where Nielson worked on the album), songs like the especially laid-back "Weekend Run" sound informed by island-themed '70s and '80s AM radio pop stars like Christopher Cross or Poco, with syrupy sweet vocal harmonies and lilting choruses that get unraveled by metallic funk verses. "Meshuggah" combines a pushy disco beat with sweet, wandering guitar chords, offering another angle of UMO's dazzled take on beach music. "Guilty Pleasures" employs slightly glitchy drum programming in an otherwise straightforward arrangement to affect a pleasant kind of confusion. V's multiple instrumental tracks serve as lingering palate cleansers between Nielson's more immediate vocal tunes. The lingering and lackadaisical "Shin Ramyun" and the dopey stroll of closing track "Drag" offer gentle and unobtrusive sounds to zone out to while processing the weird, blown-out acoustic tones of the stripped-down "I Killed Captain Cook," or the dazzling "Layla," which sounds like a Prince demo sourced from a cassette left on the beach since 1986. The same specifically hazy lo-fi production UMO has been building their strange dreamworld around since they began is present throughout V, but the album's patient, even drawn-out pacing and island overtones make it one of their most cohesive statements, even with the quick jumps in style. It's just as easy for a listener to drift off in thought as it is to obsess over its patchwork details and strange coloration, reaching a deeper, more thoughtful expression of the kind of bizarre beauty the band excels at. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi
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