Unknown Mortal Orchestra

My bread and butter as a blogger, as Father John Misty hilariously described to me once, is playing the game of 'sloppy influence identification.' As an artist I'm sure he looks at the game as an insulting and lazy way for bloggers to write about music. BUT I'm just SO GOOD at it.

And it gives me this warped sense of pride that I can reach back into my useless vault of music to pluck out stupid small moments of similarity between two or more bands/artists. Then I make a grotesque and juvenille analogy and I'm golden. 

i.e. [fill in the blank] sounds like he's been emitted from the singer of Fine Young Cannables and then crusted in Stevie Winwood's chest hair.

This is the reason I both love and hate UMO. They don't sound like anyone other than UMO. It's why I love to listen to them, but hate to write about them. It exposes me for the writer I truly am. A hack!

Right now, I'm naked and afraid. LOOK AWAY!

So Rather than 'slopily comparisize' UMO's music to another's, I'm going to create a scene for you. This is where my mind is transported to when I listen to Multi-Love.

Okay....you are in Brazil. You MUST be in Brazil because they have this weird type of underlying samba-ish beat they use. It's infectious, danceable and foot-tappable all at the same time.

AND you are bobbing up and down in the ocean waves off some sunny beach because the sound is mixed in such a way that you go in and out of lo-fi and SUPER lo-fi. Listening to this album is like half of the time you are under water and the other half of the time your ears are clogged with water. And you are doing that slamming your head to the side of your shoulder action to get out the cracklin' while slamming your palm into the temple of the opposite side of said ear that's crack a lackin'.

YET beneath the bubble of lo-fi is just beautiful music with solos laid down by flamenco guitars and trumpets and saxophones and whole bunch of other shit.

Most amazingly the album is cohesive, yet it sounds like it has been recorded in, and is influenced by shit in various decades: 60's bosa nova steeze, 70's funk, 80's synth, 90's style electronic, 2000's pop, etc.

It's a fucking hodgepodge and I can't describe hodgepodges because they are so hodgepodgey. So, I'm not going to say anything more.

Give Multi-Love a listen. You'll either love or hate the smorgasbord of meats and cheeses. Me? I'm fucking indulging on the shit.