★★★★☆
To state the obvious, Covid brought about significant changes for many. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the longstanding New Zealand psych-rockers who originally started as an anonymous outfit on Bandcamp, were no different. Frontman and multi-instrumentalist Ruben Nielson began splitting his time between Palm Springs and Hawaii for family reasons. You can see the location’s effect on music and songwriting on the band’s appropriately titled fifth album, V.
V is an embracing of palm trees, gentle sunshine and waves flattening against the sand. Whereas the band had always previously looked to shun a lot of childhood influences around 80’s pop, preferring the road of rebellion and leaning unapologetically into the alternative, they now sound more relaxed and at ease with themselves, with an album that seems to owe as much to Prince as it does Sonic Youth. This is a long way from the lo-fi psychedelia, which they originally set blogs ablaze in the early 2010s, and it’s a more than worthy evolution.
UMO’s first double album, clocking in at an hour in length, there’s ample room on V for leaning in new directions, especially as we get not one, not two, but four instrumental tracks. The album’s opener ‘The Garden’ fits into the band’s classic MO. Over six minutes long, it really works as a bridge between the band that blew up a decade ago and the band they are now.
Album highlights do come from songs that have been around for a while. Initially released in 2021, ‘Weekend Run’ and ‘That Life’ see UMO grooving into funk territory, building on their ‘70s aesthetic; while they have served their debts to the rough unwieldiness of Jimi Hendrix, ‘That Life’ is a sun-lounger of a song with tight Fleetwood Mac-esque rhythms.
Led by a carefree guitar, it’s luxury rock from a band that have always existed on the edge. Despite the optimistic sonics, the lyrics hint at something more insidious lurking in the sunshine’s shadows. “Brother of cocaine, a tequila son-in-law / End of the world today”, Neilson sings, suggesting wherever there is joy and escapism, darkness and damnation are never far away.
Meanwhile, ‘Weekend Run’ offers the closest the band have ever come to a pop hook as the song bops along as if it was produced by Pharrell Williams and had the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea juddering his funky bass. Escapism is yet again the song’s theme as Neilson sings, “When the weekend comes / Yeah, we’ll be lost in love”, over a jangly guitar and steady rhythm that would not be out of place on a Harry Styles album. It’s a joy to hear a band open themselves up like this.
While the first half of V is a beachside funk-out, side B veers into more dramatic ballad territory with ‘Nadja’ seeing UMO fight with obsessive melancholy over some of Neilson’s darkest and strangest lyrics that imbue a love that becomes dangerously excessive: “Nadja baby / Found a strand of your hair and ate it / Couldn’t throw away this thing you left behind”.
Perhaps the band’s opus is ‘I Killed Captain Cook’, an acoustic tune that sees Neilson’s songwriting at its most ambitious. The song tells the story of the colonising Cook from the point of view of the Hawaiian who killed him after he attempted to kidnap the ruling chief of the island – events which led to the fall of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Using traditional Hawaiian folk music to tell the story, the song is a touching tribute to Nielson’s ancestors and a reminder of the possibilities of lyricism.
Ultimately, there’s something very confirming about V. UMO have been around a long time now, but new recording surroundings have birthed a new band. A better band. A more open band now making the most accomplished music of their careers.
In many ways, UMO has simplified things and no longer box themselves into their indie corner. While the sunshine that particularly percolates the first half of the album and the hooks that come with that are unlikely to send them competing with The Weeknd at the top of the charts, V is proof of their ambition and unwillingness to sit still as the world moves around them.
