Multi‐Love by Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Multi-Love, Unknown Mortal Orchestra's third studio album, landed on Jagjaguwar on 26 May 2015, and it's the sound of Ruban Nielson's life getting complicated. The title points right at it: a year-long polyamorous relationship between Nielson, his wife and a younger woman, and the songs ride the whole arc, from euphoria and sexual experimentation to plain emotional exhaustion. Nielson produced, mixed and engineered every second of it himself.

What comes out is psychedelic pop cooked up in a hot, humid room: wobbly synths, rubbery grooves and a voice sighing through the haze. The title track and "Can't Keep Checking My Phone" both made BBC 6 Music's A-list, the album showed up on year-end lists at the Guardian, NME and Consequence of Sound, and it got talked about in the same breath as Tame Impala's Currents as one of 2015's two big psychedelic statements. It turned out to be the Auckland band's global breakthrough.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.