Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Seafoam Walls at Roadrunner
photo courtesy Eva McNally ‘25
by Eva McNally ‘25
Unknown Mortal Orchestra (UMO) made themselves known while closing out their V tour at Roadrunner Saturday, April 22nd. The album for which the tour was named was released on March 17th, 2023. The psychedelic rock band, from Auckland, New Zealand, consists of members Ruban Neilson (lead vocals and guitar), brother Cody Neilson (drums and vocals), and Jacob Portrait (bass and backing vocals). Chris Neilson, Cody’s and Ruban’s father, also accompanied the band on tour, playing the keyboard and synths, as did Christian Li, a pianist and “synthesizer enthusiast.”
UMO played a nineteen-song set, including four of the songs that were a double feature that blended seamlessly with each other–it was closer to twenty-three songs. They played a monster encore of six songs, which included “Hunnybee,” their second most popular track on Spotify, which is creeping up on 113 million streams. The performance itself was nearly two hours long, and fans surged out of the venue a little after eleven.
Seafoam Walls, a band from Miami, Florida, supported UMO on this tour. The band consists of singer and guitarist Jayan Bertrand, multi-instrumentalist Dion Kerr, bassist Joshua Ewers, and drummer Josue Vargas. Their sound is genre-bending, taking inspiration from jazz, shoegaze, indie rock, and hip-hop. They describe their music as “Caribbean Jazzgaze.” The band started off their set with the opening track on their latest debut album XVi, titled “Soundcheck.” They also treated the audience with an unreleased song titled “Cabin Fever.” They brought the energy before UMO came on stage.
image courtesy Eva McNally ‘25
UMO’s stage setup was simple, yet effective. Towards the back of the stage, behind all of the equipment and instruments, were large light-up letters with bulbs that spelled out “UMO.” Before the band hit the stage, the middle of the M was lit up to look like a V, cleverly referencing the name of the album they were touring. Throughout the show, the lights changed colors, flashed, faded in and out, breathing life into the performance, and making the fog seem like it was alive as it poured from the machines.
The set was incredibly well-balanced, containing songs from every album except for IC-01 Hanoi, their 2018 instrumental album. Even without it, they managed to prove that they could deliver the instrumentals with no problem. Ruban had his fair share of incredible solos, as did Li. The set opened with “The Garden,” the opening track on V, which included an unbelievable solo on the synths before the rest of the band joined him on stage. Whenever Li had a solo, Ruben would step back, almost completely disappearing from sight.
“So Good At Being in Trouble,” the eleventh song on the setlist, has racked up nearly 160 million streams on Spotify. Ruben’s voice was crystal clear as the crowd sang along to this track. The song was pitched down from the studio version, which added an intimate feel. Rather than stopping and moving on to the next track, the band seamlessly transitioned into “Waves of Confidence.”
The last song before the encore was the title track from the album Multi-Love. According to Genius, the album’s central topic is the polyamorous relationship between Ruben, his wife of seventeen years, Jenny, and a woman codenamed Laura. In a twisted turn of fate, Ruben met Laura while on tour in Tokyo, and the two decided to keep in touch. He introduced Laura to his wife, and the three eventually came to live together in Portland together with Ruben and Jenny’s two children.
In a Song Exploder interview, Ruban said: “If you have, like, different relationships, so if you have a bunch of people that you fall in love with in your life and then you start to wonder whether you’re continuously in love with the same part of different people—that to me is what Multi-Love is about.” The whole album is a beautiful exploration of non-monogamous love, and love more generally: what it means to share your life with someone, and how complicated it is. According to an interview with Pitchfork, the cover of the album is a photo that Laura took of Ruban’s basement studio, edited to enhance the pink light.
UMO played a charismatic cover of Grateful Dead’s “Shakedown Street” during the encore. They closed off the evening with “Can’t Keep Checking My Phone,” which again, comes from Multi-Love. It continues to explore the love triangle between Jenny, Ruben, and Laura. Laura was working on a project in the Peruvian jungle and all the while, Jenny and Ruben pined for her. Her visa eventually expired for good, which marked the end of the relationship. This conflict plays out in the song, capturing the joys of this romance, and the intense feelings of love and loss.
