A 20th Anniversary Dynamic New Album
There’s just no other band like Umphrey’s McGee — dynamic, bizarre, insanely talented, intellectual and groovy as hell. On their latest album, it’s not us, the band takes all the elements that make them so unique and create an ironically named primer for themselves. Long hailed as the music snob’s favorite esoteric jam band, UM is operating at peak them on this crazy, electrifying record.
Celebrating their 20th year together, the band decided to go back into the studio for a solid week, creating new music from scratch, rather than rehashing their established catalog. “It’s been easy to play the hits from our first five or ten years,” writes Joel Cummins (keys/vocals) on their website. “We’ve never been a band to rest on our laurels though. New music is key to our continued development. We’re known as a strong live band, but we take so much pride in our writing. This album distinguishes us because the focus is on that writing.”
Leading with the pop-rock single “The Silent Type,” the band sprints out of the gate with a surprisingly mainstream, retro-tinged, radio friendly hit. “We’ve mastered our ADD here” guitarist/vocalist Brendan Bayliss writes on their website. The band’s signature manic time signatures and dueling guitar riffs are simmering on the back burner here, present but taking a backseat (for now). It’s also one of the only tracks on the record where the lyrics are centered, and they’re good ones: “Everybody starts with the same motivation, a little bit of love, a little less conversation.” It’s a tight, satisfying, dance-worthy jam.
The funky factor jumps up a few notches on “Looks,” a darkly dissonant and searingly cool rock tune, strongly evoking Talking Heads and Oingo Boingo. “Whistle Kids” is massively satisfying, driven by killer blues guitar leads, a seductive whistle riff, perfectly blended soulful vocal harmonies and more excellently crafted lyrics: “I’m a little banged up and I gotta admit that it’s my own fault that I feel like shit.”
By track six, “Remind Me,” all bets are effectively called off. Starting off as a chill, cool tune with dreamlike synth and groovy guitar, kind of like a cross between the Police and Dave Matthews Band, mid-song the track abruptly descends into a dark, deconstructed and increasingly manic jam rock symphony. The band’s technical prowess reigns supreme, with musical threads weaving in and out at will, led by absolutely shredding guitar solos, often in harmony, and yet somehow there is always a throughline. There is an eerie seamlessness to their approach that both keeps listeners on edge and sucks them into their strange and interesting world.
The band is made up of super trained music theory nerds, and the intricacies of their rhythmic structure, frequently changing time signatures and subdividing beats as the mood strikes, often becomes the cohesive element even when they’re switching from manic metal to acoustic folk, as they do on track seven “You and You Alone.” Folky love ballad? Sure, why not. Even on this sweet and subdued track UM sounds like themselves. The multi-layered rhythmic acoustic guitar is a atypical of folk music, which tends to be more sparse. There is a ton of texture on the track, which is a bit busy for such a pretty song, but it works and it’s wholly them.
The last few tracks throw even more elements in the mix, stirring the album into a dense conclusion. ’80s power chords? Sure. Sax driven funk? Why not. As a musician, it’s exhausting to listen to UM; keeping up with deconstructing all the elements in play is overwhelming — but to just listen is a treat. There’s no way to classify what the band does succinctly, by any conventional genre terms. It’s distinctly postmodern pop-rock, in the sense that no particular element takes precedent and any given time. The vocals are stellar, but the vocal tracks are often embedded further back in the mix. The lyrics are witty and tongue-in-cheek, but rarely are they the focus. The rhythmic structure is often king, but then the melodies and harmonies soar on top. Every song is its own universe.
“We called the record it’s not us, because it’s really not about us,” Joel writes. “This is for the fans.” If you haven’t heard UM before listening to this record, by the end of the album you will either be thoroughly confused, or a die hard new fan.
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