Jared Mattson and Ruban Nielson Detail Collaborative Album ‘FEAR’

A brief, concentrated recording session in Palm Springs last June yielded FEAR, a new collaborative album from Jared Mattson of the Mattson 2 and Ruban Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The two connected online in 2024, having admired each other’s work from a distance, and wrote and tracked the full LP over just a couple of days. Jagjaguwar will release the album next month.

The pairing makes sense. Both musicians have built careers around twisting guitar-led psych into shapes that feel off-kilter and personal. Mattson’s duo with his brother has always leaned into instrumental complexity and a certain sunbaked drift. Nielson, across five UMO records, has pulled classic rock and soul through a fuzzy, interior lens. Together they’ve arrived at something that sounds less like a fusion of their main projects and more like a third thing entirely — leaner, stranger, with its own gravity.

Mattson described the world they imagined for these songs as one built for movement rather than comfort. Old motels with buzzing vacancy signs, abandoned gas stations at dusk, empty parking lots washed in sodium light — spaces where people pass through but don’t stay. Bleak, anonymous, quietly human. That mood holds in “AMERICAN EAGLE,” the first single, where sharp guitar phrasing cuts across a dry, restless rhythm. There’s no resolution, just forward motion and the hum of something unresolved.

Nielson’s catalog has always rewarded close listening, and Mattson’s recent solo work has pushed further from easy structure. FEAR sounds brief and deliberate, the kind of record that makes a point and moves on.