When he founded Unknown Mortal Orchestra in 2010, Ruban Nielson declared his intention to “hatch a new musical dimension,” using the language of psychedelia as a cover for old-fashioned solipsism. UMO’s insomniac psych-rock has an escapist quality, but it is the inward escape of burrowing so deeply into solitude that one’s own misery becomes abstract. In the half-ruins of Nielson’s songs, loneliness is so pervasive you forget it’s there. This commitment to interiority is part of his outsider charm, which stretches far beyond the Portland, Oregon basement where he often records. Just as Tame Impala use solitude to springboard into kaleidoscopic wonderlands, Nielson maps inward frustrations to make his home in the psychic gutter.
That he remains morbidly internal on Sex & Food, UMO’s mildew-covered fourth record, is hardly surprising. On its predecessor, 2015’s Multi-Love, Nielson documented the true story of his and his wife’s entanglement with a shared third lover, somehow coming away with the breeziest music of his solo career. That record’s spiritual uplift was a relief—both in musical terms and as a window into Nielson’s psychiatric health, often grimly portrayed in his nihilistic lyrics. On some level, it’s a relief again to see Nielson discover new territory on Sex & Food. The record’s otherworldly folk, shellshocked R&B, and emaciated soul drift closer than ever to that “new musical dimension” of his. But it can be an exhausting trip.
Where Multi-Love upped UMO’s mainstream- and sex-appeal, here we have a more radical reinvention—one that dials down both qualities to a freezing point. These minimal songs sound ready to give up the ghost altogether and sink back into the fabric of the universe. This was always a danger, that Nielson’s antique obsessions—his compression of rock history into pedals, fog-machine filters, and other vintage affects—would finally land him in a creative black hole. But the black hole, it turns out, sounds pretty good: bleak, austere, kind of creepy, but possessed of something admirably deranged, pinballing between love and indifference, bops and dirges, pop and its opposite.
Hidden in this chilly world is an assortment of oddities: “How Many Zeros” projects Nielson’s falsetto onto ghostly funk, like Thundercat master tapes fished from a river, while “Hunnybee,” a love song to his young daughter, sleepwalks between disco and R&B with eerie calm. Even “Not in Love We’re Just High,” a gorgeous declaration of romantic incapacity, sounds washed-out and strangled, like a downbeat Prince rarity recorded on a dictaphone in Arthur Russell’s pocket.
At times, you begin to feel like a prisoner in the “hostile wasteland” described in “Ministry of Alienation.” Full of oblique nods to modern disaffection—“No one will fuck the ugly robot,” Nielson wheezes—the psych-folk curio meanders inconclusively and ends with a miniature, mortally wounded sax solo. Much of Sex & Food sounds like work in progress, ideas toward a more inviting fusion of insular sounds and soulful alienation. If these are indeed building blocks, the completed music might sound something like “If You’re Going to Break Yourself,” weird-era Sly Stone feel and lyrics about friendships lost in a drug wilderness. While still rooted in Nielson’s desires and frustrations, this human moment hints at a UMO enriched by looking to the outside world once in a while.
Sex & Food is best in this spaced-out zone, where alienation sounds genuinely alien. The record’s disembodiment is precisely what makes it intriguing and, occasionally, unlistenable. The songs often sound reluctant to be heard at all and have none of the lysergic flair that makes gear-driven rock music indulgent. Sex & Food goes the opposite way, draining away all empathy and worldly color until you are cocooned, for better or worse, in Ruban Nielson’s tiny, claustrophobic psyche.
