Unknown Mortal Orchestra Announce Sex & Food, Share “American Guilt” Video
Photo by Neil Krug
New Zealand’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra have a new album on the way, and if it’s anywhere near as gratifying as its title, we’re in for a treat. Sex & Food is due out on April 6 via Jagjaguwar.
Frontman Ruban Nielson is taking UMO “into both familiar and unexpected territory” on their new album, per a press release, exploring questions like, “What are we consuming? How is it affecting us, and why does everything feel so bad and weird sometimes?” Sex & Food is the band’s first release since 2015’s Multi-Love, an acclaimed set of exceedingly danceable psych-rock songs.
UMO recorded Sex & Food in an assortment of far-flung locales, including Seoul, Hanoi, Reykjavik, Mexico City and Auckland, in addition to Nielson’s Portland home base, lending the record a seeking, exploratory sort of feel. The title’s simplistic delightfulness is a deliberate stroke on the band’s part, meant to emphasize “two of the most undeniably pleasurable experiences in life; positivity despite the strangeness of our times.”
In addition to their album announcement, UMO have shared the Greg Sharp-directed video for their recent single “American Guilt.” We highlighted the song as our Daily Dose last month, with Paste’s Loren DiBlasi dubbing it “a distinctly democratic … psych rock banger.” “American Guilt” is the first new single that the band has released since 2016’s “First World Problem.”
Nielson says of “American Guilt” in a statement:
“American Guilt” is an attempt to capture some of the feelings floating around these days. In a perverse way I wanted to embrace this abandoned genre of rock music that I keep reading is “dead” and invite people to hear what this living dead genre sounds like in the UMO universe. It was recorded in Hanoi, Vietnam during monsoon season in a studio built for traditional Vietnamese music. Additional recording was done in Mexico City but our sessions were interrupted by one of the devastating earthquakes that occurred there last year. As we slept in the Parque de Mexico, unable to get back to our Airbnb, we heard a man yell “viva la Mexico!” and I put this in the song out of respect for them.
UMO will tour North American and Europe in support of Sex & Food starting this spring and into the summer, sharing stages with Makeness, Shamir and Sylvan Esso at select shows along the way. Their run kicks off on April 22 in Northampton, Mass., spending the latter half of May in Europe and stopping at the Netherlands’ Best Kept Secret Festival in June before later concluding with a July 19 stop in Phoenix, Ariz.
Watch the video for “American Guilt” and listen to UMO’s 2011 Daytrotter Session below. Further down, you’ll find the details of Sex & Food and the band’s 2018 tour dates.
