Unknown Mortal Orchestra: FEAR in the desert 🏜️
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
If you've spent any time in the SoCal Mojave desert, you may have heard of a legendary venue called Pappy & Harriet's.. Tucked away in Pioneertown and famous for its rich cinematic history and its vibrant desert music scene, major touring bands & artists (including Paul McCartney) continue to stop here to share their gifts among the Yucca blossoms with the desert dwellers.
Set among a functioning 1880's Old West-style town originally built in 1946 as a living movie set by Hollywood investors, including actors Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, this is where I was lucky enough to score two last minute tickets to a sold-out show a couple weeks ago.
This would be my third time witnessing the musical magic of Ruban Nielson and the integral limbs of UMO, but this time felt different. Maybe it was the fact that I stood directly in front of the speaker stacks stage left, in the front row the whole show 🙃, or maybe it was the open-air venue surrounded by the rocky hills and Joshua Trees that seemed to pair visually with the sonic landscape like good wine.
All I knew was the experience itself was transcendent and psychedelic, and that more than ever, live music is gonna be okay.
Unbridled freedom and innovation seep out of every pore of UMO's style - combining soul, funk, psych rock, jazz, and the type of chord changes and harmonies that would scratch the itchy ear of any music nerd I know (a term of endearment obvs). This is why I've been so excited to dive in to Nielson's new venture.
Enter: FEAR. A new instrumental joint project by Ruban Nielson (UMO) and Jared Mattson (The Mattson 2), who teamed up to write and record the album over the course of just a few days in Palm Springs, CA in the summer of 2024. Inspired by liminal spaces and the distortion within "the American Dream", our journey with FEAR begins with American Eagle.
Mattson on the creative process: "We imagined the music living in in-between places — old motels with buzzing vacancy signs, abandoned gas stations at dusk, vast parking lots lit by sodium lamps where engines idle and lives briefly overlap. Spaces built for movement, not comfort. Bleak, anonymous, quietly human. Music that could sit inside that loneliness without trying to fix it — beauty carrying a low hum of danger underneath, calm without anesthesia."
Listen to the 7 song album out now (June 5th) on Jagjaguwar, and enjoy some of my own iPhone footage from the show at Pappy & Harriets. Be sure to catch Ruban and Jared LIVE at Zebulon in LA July 7th!
