Sudden screams filled the air as Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s creator Ruban Nielson and his band took to the stage, making the room temperature rise by a few notches. They go straight into an energetic first song demonstrating exactly why UMO have become the band to see. Ruban would almost dance with his guitar, playing wicked silky solos which makes you wonder how his hand found the time to all play notes. Ably assisted by a bicycle shops worth of peddles, turning his electric guitar into a funk filled machine and making the audience howl, shout and erupt with energy for what felt like everyone’s favourite band – especially for ‘Ur Life One Night’, which is brilliantly redolent of early Prince and certainly got everyone grooving.
Admittedly, the first few songs felt like UMO were stuck on auto-pilot (which I’m sure is hard to get off for modern artists with huge world tours), with obvious solos and Ruban dramatically jumping on the speakers – though great all the same. Things definitely changed when they started playing the heartfelt love ballad ‘So Good At Being In Trouble’ which had the crowd in song putting UMO in almost disbelief for the amount of appreciation Brighton was showing them. They then performed lovely funked up versions of ‘Swim And Sleep’ and ‘Stage Or Screen’, personal highlights for me, especially as Ruban jumped into the crowd just in front of where I was.
The set drew to a close reflecting where they had started from to where they are now. UMO’s first ever single ‘Ffunny Ffrends’ was made in Rubens bedroom and landed online without accreditation making “the bloggers” search out its creator and now a sold out crowd was singing it over and over. They then started playing the lead single off their latest album ‘Multi Love’, a perfect pop song in my opinion. If you weren’t moving before, you were now, as the whole crowd were jumping for joy and singing louder than Ruban. An encore brought my favourite song off Multi Love, the super cool sounding ‘Necessary Evil’. Comparatively downtempo against the previous songs, its superb songwriting illustrates just why UMO have such a phenomenal following. With a part of the audience already singing the chorus they start the spaghetti western intro to ‘Can’t Keep Checking My Phone’, another exceptional track from a mightily strong catalogue despite having released only three albums. With the entire room leaving in a state of glee, it is easy to see why there is so much love for Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
Iain Lauder