Indie rock band Unknown Mortal Orchestra has released a new music video for their track “Can’t Keep Checking My Phone,” from their latest album, Multi-Love.
Multi-Love is nine-track album that was released in May 2015 and features a variety of genre influences, from contemporary psychedelic pop to classic lo-fi and blues. The group toured in May and June in support of the new album, traveling from the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. to Europe, then to Canada and back to the United States to finish it off. They will be playing more shows in September, but this time they’ll be staying exclusively in the UK.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra originally released “Can’t Keep Checking My Phone” as single in April. The song is a standout from the album, with a catchy beat and a melody that is easy to listen to. The only other music video that Unknown Mortal Orchestra has made for a track from Multi-Love is the one for “Ur Life One Night.” That music video features depictions of South Asian style and culture, but with some weird aspects, including animated lightning strikes to indicate scene changes and a man dressed as a turtle stuck on its back.
The video begins in black and white, with two people speaking to each other. As soon as they begin to look at a mysterious object they’ve found, something begins to happen to people all over and the video becomes colorized. With each object or person’s reaction the video focuses on a label, whether it be a syndrome, therapy or some other descriptive term of the visual. Dimitri Basil, who co-directed the video with Cooper Roussell, says, “‘Can’t Keep Checking My Phone’ is so full of sounds and its lyrics are so elusive so I decided that one idea wouldn’t do the track justice. My approach was to present the multiple ideas as if they were a trading card deck. Trading cards, like Mars Attacks, have a short description accompanied by illustrations. In this case the deck is about strange occurrences, syndromes or phenomena.”
This video is very different from “Ur Life One Night,” but both have a decidedly Unknown Mortal Orchestra feel to them. Watch the unique video below, but be warned that there is brief nudity in the video, so it may not be safe for work.
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