Attention Muppets fans: Unknown Mortal Orchestra have shared a surreal music video for their new track, “That Life,” and it stars a puppet modeled after the band’s mastermind, Ruban Nielson.
The psychedelic “That Life” is a reminder that there’s no such thing as fully escaping real life. “Girl in the bathroom, Florida key,” Nielson sings. “Certainties all away/ Brother of cocaine, a tequila son-in-law/ End of the world today.”
Touching on the song’s creation in a statement, Nielson said,
“I saw this painting by Hieronymus Bosch called The Garden of Earthly Delights and in the painting there was a mixture of crazy stuff going on, representing heaven, earth, and hell. I was imagining the same kind of Where’s Waldo (or Where’s Wally as we call it in New Zealand, Australia, and the UK) of contrasting scenes and multiple characters all engaged in that same perverse mixture of luxury, reverie, damnation, in the landscape of America. Somewhere on holiday under a vengeful sun.”
In the Lydia Fine- and Tony Blahd-directed video, Nielson’s puppet doppelganger (designed by Muppets and Sesame Street puppeteer and fabricator Laura Manns) tries to enjoy a vacation by the pool and in the desert while holding those feelings of dread at bay. Watch the clip below.
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“That Life” follows June’s “Weekend Run,” which marked UMO’s first proper single since 2018’s Sex & Food. They followed up that LP with IC-01 Hanoi, an instrumental album featuring Sex & Food leftovers, while also collaborating with The Free Nationals and Daniel Caesar on “Beauty & Essex.”
