Orchestral manoeuvres in the park

Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s zany album was inspired by Ruban Nielson’s extensive globe-trotting — including an unscheduled stop in Mexico City’s Bosque de Chapultepec

Ruban Nielson, the New Zealander who is the creative force behind Unknown Mortal Orchestra, is not one to shy away from an out-there experience. His band’s last album, the celebrated Multi-Love (2015), was largely about a polyamorous relationship he’d had (for a year, a young woman from Japan came to live with Nielson and his wife and children at their home in Portland, Oregon). His newest, Sex & Food, steps outside the home studio; far outside, in fact, as it was recorded in Reykjavik, Hanoi and Mexico City, where Nielson and a bandmate found themselves trapped in Chapultepec Park during the devastating earthquake, an incident which also informed the album’s outward-facing, state-of-theworld approach.

Not that the hot global mess we’re in should get in the way of some seriously inviting tunes, and Sex & Food — named for “the last and best remaining pleasures”, according to Nielson — is dripping with them. There’s the sweetness of “Hunnybee”, written as a semi-instructional ditty for Nielson’s young daughter, Iris; and the gutsy, dystopian rock riffs of “American Guilt”; and if you’ve heard a lovelier, hazy funk ode to the destructive influence of drugs in a relationship than album closer “If You’re Going to Break Yourself” this year then we’d be amazed. It seems Nielson’s not done exploring yet.

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Sex & Food (Jagjaguwar) is out on 6 April