Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Ruban Nielson has a crappy and even weak voice judging by what comes out of the live videos available on YouTube. I've never listened to U.M.O. in person, but if my impression as a moldy listener glued to a computer is correct, it could be one of the reasons why in the studio Nielson mistreats his voice, filters it, distorts it, and tucks it behind everything else as if it were a shoegaze band.

Whatever the reason, this thing does a lot of good for the sound of the group, in my opinion. The keyword is distortion, in whose concoction what seems to me like a medium tremolo prevails, applied to everything like mayonnaise, even the voice. Skewed pop melodies sung by a gremlin, beautifully compressed and hyper-distorted guitars and basses. It results in a sound that is original, dreamlike, psychedelic, multicolored to me, good as a soundtrack for an autumnal picnic sometimes with an 80s Erin Gray from space, sometimes with a 90s Jenny McCarthy dressed as a cheerleader, sometimes with Schrödinger's cat after the box test.