Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson Won’t Tell You What He’s Thinking

Ruban Nielson has never been the type of guy to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but the mastermind behind psych-pop band Unknown Mortal Orchestra seems to be coming around to it. The band closed out last year by playing a run of club shows in San Francisco, he tells me over the phone from Los Angeles beachfront neighbourhood Venice. “The last night was New Year’s and we played ‘Heroes’—the David Bowie song—right on the countdown. I had a lot of fun at that show and it was a fun night, so I thought maybe I do want to do New Year’s shows.”

It’s something that local fans will be pretty happy to hear. Nielson has called Portland home for the past 10 years now, but he’ll be back in New Zealand later this month to headline New Year’s Eve music festival Wondergarden alongside acts like LEISURE, Chelsea Jade and SWIDT. It’s the band’s first concert in the country since their sold out tour two years ago in support of Multi-Love, their third record that nabbed them the Silver Scroll Award and Tui for Best Alternative Album at the NZ Music Awards.

It was Nielson’s most revealing work to date, but along with the praise came a heap of scrutiny and chatter over his personal life. In an interview with Pitchfork at the time, Nielson spoke openly about how the album was inspired by a three-way relationship between himself, his wife and another woman who had gone to stay with them and their two children in Portland. Visa issues would eventually separate them and the emotional fallout from the story left Nielson a little weary about what he chooses to disclose in interviews.

“I was quite naive in some ways,” he says now. “I’m really grateful that I get to do pretty much my favourite thing I could possibly do for my job. Especially on that Multi-Love cycle, I kind of felt like I owed the audience everything. After a while you realise actually there are some lines that I should be drawing here for myself and the people around me … It’s not that I exactly regret what I’ve done, but I do feel like I’ve learned my lesson in some respects.

“I got really used to the media being a certain way from being in New Zealand and in the Mint Chicks and stuff like that. But I think that in this clickbait era, it’s like the rules are slightly different and it’s a bit more toxic and dangerous. It’s not really that important that I tell people exactly what’s going on. I don’t really want people to think that my songs are about my life. I want people to think that my songs are about their lives. I think those songs are like that if I just shut my mouth enough.”

There’ll be plenty more material for everyone to dissect and discuss now that there’s another UMO record on the way. Little is known about the project right now and we’re both under strict instructions to keep any talk about it to a minimum, but Nielson tells me it’s been coming together over the past year and a half. His brother Kody, who previously played with him in early-2000s punk outfit The Mint Chicks and now heads up his own solo project Silicon, is all over the new stuff too. Earlier this year, they spent time working on some of the new material in Auckland and the sessions have also taken Nielson to Mexico City, Reykjavik, Hanoi and Seoul.

“I was trying to get used to going to different studios and thinking ‘can I be creative in a place that I’m not familiar with? Can I leave the house?’ All the UMO stuff and the Mint Chicks stuff was mostly all just recorded in places that me and Kody lived. The idea of even working in a studio is quite foreign to me and I’ve been doing this for 15 years or something.”

Even so, getting out of his comfort zone is something he’s been doing a bit more of lately. A couple of years ago, Nielson was involved in the recording sessions for Blonde, Frank Ocean’s contemplative and acclaimed second album. Ultimately, Nielson didn’t make it onto the record, but he mentions that they ended up logging some more time together earlier this year.

Working on other people’s music is something that Nielson is still trying to get his head around, plus he tends to get a little bit sidetracked by thinking about doing UMO stuff anyway. There’s been offers from other producers who want to collaborate with him too, but for now he’s keeping his circle tight.

“I’m so used to doing everything DIY that outside of working with Kody, it’s hard to figure out what the workflow would be. I’ve started to work with Jake [Portrait] more on this record, the bass player in the band. He’s a producer as well so when I expand the circle it’s like my dad, Kody and my best buddy who plays bass in my band. I do get hit up a lot, but it never seems to happen.”

One thing he did manage to do was to get out and see Thor: Ragnarok, the hilarious and latest addition to the Marvel universe from filmmaker, national treasure and reigning New Zealander of the Year Taika Waititi. “I think especially being in the States for the last 10 years or so, Taika’s movies to me capture the best parts of what I miss about New Zealand,” says Nielson. “I assumed it was going to be good, but I didn’t realise how many Kiwi private jokes were going to be in it. I was in a full theatre and I was laughing my head off at parts that everyone else was silent on. People were just looking at me, like what?”

As for when we can expect to hear the new UMO album: “It’s close. That’s all I can say at the moment. I think people are going to think it’s the best thing we’ve done. I feel pretty confident about it. I’m excited about it.”

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