Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson brings sibling Kody back into the mix.
Whether it’s because of sibling rivalry or brotherly love, bands bound by blood are frequently able to use family matters to kick up the creativity. And whereas fraternal friction has given way to messy public breakups for Oasis’s
Liam and Noel Gallagher and the Everly Brothers’ Phil and Don, it seems to be the bedrock for groups such as the National (which includes two sets of brothers) and Arcade Fire’s Win and Will Butler.
Back in their early 2000s Mint Chicks days, Ruban and Kody Nielson seemed to rock along on a permanently inventive roller coaster of punch-ups, rows and stunning pugilistic punk before heading off in different directions: Ruban to the psychedelic indie groove of Unknown Mortal Orchestra (winners of the 2012 Taite Music Prize) and Kody to the electronica of Silicon (winners of the 2016 Taite prize).
It’s probably fair to say that Ruban has enjoyed a larger profile, with three albums spawning critically acclaimed Antipodean, European and US tours and performances on the latenight US talk-show circuit.
But it seems for his fourth Unknown Mortal Orchestra (UMO) outing, Sex & Food, he’s brought his bro back into the mix. The first inkling was in an interview I had with Kody last year when he talked about travelling to Vietnam with Kody and UMO bassist Jake Portrait, setting up a recording studio in their hotel room and recording with local musicians who’d made their instruments out of bamboo.
Portrait clearly knew what he was getting into – he’d produced the Mint Chicks’ third album, Screens, until, as he put it in a 2013 interview, “Ruban and his brother had a falling-out”. For his part, Kody said meeting up was instrumental in “sparking off enough inspiration to start a new idea. Ruban seemed really keen to go to Vietnam because of all the history and the atmosphere and what happened with America and the war.”
Sex & Food comes laden with a lot of that travel atmosphere. American Guilt may have been written and recorded in Mexico City around the time of last year’s earthquake, but it could easily be informed by the US involvement in Vietnam. This Doomsday has a Southeast Asian gamelan-esque beat, and other tracks were recorded as far afield as Seoul, Reykjavik and Portland.
The overall effect is a more grownup album than 2015’s Multi-Love. The set of songs swirls from the familiar funked-up R&B groove of Hunnybee and warped-Prince keyboard glitch of Not in Love We’re Just High to the bombastic rock stomp of American Guilt, the glam-rock psych-out Major League Chemicals and the lyrically bizarre folk song Chronos Feasts on His Children.
To my mind, though, the album’s highlight is soulful ballad If You’re Going to Break Yourself, in which Ruban’s typically distorted vocals are powerfully clear over a minimal drum beat and a sparse guitar. It’s telling that the premiere of this track was part of a session for the BBC last month when UMO became the simple duo of Ruban on a gentle acoustic guitar alongside Kody on keys and vocoder. The result is very different from anything the pair have recorded before (certainly compared with their Mint Chicks past) and includes a version of American Guilt that unplugs the hard-rock riff and becomes a jazzy Tim Buckley ballad.
During that BBC session, Ruban hinted at a line-up change for UMO this year, and judging by the recent involvement of Kody, don’t be surprised if it becomes a band of brothers.