Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Can’t Keep Checking My Phone

You’ll need your attention and maracas to hand for this new cut from UMO’s upcoming album ‘Multi-Love’: before you know it, you’ve moved from fifteen seconds of drab, melancholy brass into a world of sun-flecked funk and irresistible Latin beats. “We eat crickets in the future,” Ruban Nielson murmurs loosely, “drink Chicha in the jungle”. There’s definitely something of the cicada to the hectic drum track – but the elliptical lyrics aren’t just about the tropics.

As the title suggests, it’s all about connectedness, in quite a different way from another knockout phone-related single – Ariel Pink’s ‘Put Your Number In My Phone’. Here, the caller on the domestic end of the line is disinterested and unimpressed by cricket-eating, Chicha-swilling exploits abroad: “That sounds great, I’m kinda busy, could you call back again? I’m sure you’ll come back, till then I can’t keep checking my phone.” That may sound harsh, but there’s no bad guy, really – just technology’s power to connect, and the paradoxical disconnectedness that results. Bet you weren’t expecting that insight to arrive in the form of a psychedelic, synthy samba.