Xenophanes, con Juan, Marcel, Thomas, Ximena Sariñana, Mark Aanderud, 14°lp, 2009

The insanely prolific Omar Rodríguez-López blasts his peculiarity all over his thirteenth solo record in five years. He’s played on half a dozen albums this year alone, including The Mars Volta’s Octahedron and El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez’s Cryptomnesia.

What sets Xenophanes apart from the rest is that this record features his own vocals at the forefront. Rodríguez-López uses his pipes like another instrument, infusing each note with heavy effects and tonal manipulation. He shares singing duties with the marvellous Ximena Sariñana and their similar styles give the record a peculiar, haunting quality.

Bassist Juan Alderete de la Peña (Racer X, The Mars Volta), drummer Thomas Pridgen (The Mars Volta), and multi-instrumentalist Marcellus Rodríguez-López, Omar’s younger brother, flesh out Rodríguez-López’s backing band for the record.

It’s Rodríguez-López’s blazing guitar and vocals that take centre-stage, however. This is a record of force, urgency and sonic violence. It is also, surprisingly, an exercise in scarcity and neatness. For the most part, he shies away from the long, overlapping guitar soloing and experimentation that many have come to know and instead sticks to songs with sharp structure and concision.

That’s not to say that Rodríguez-López has hung up his odd tendencies, of course, as Xenophanes is full of outrageous segments of sound.

“Ojo al Cristo de Plata,” which translates to “Beware of the Silver Christ,” is a beautiful, melodic track that makes excellent use of assorted bending and stretching effects. Pridgen’s drums drive and clatter in the wavering background and the piece feels like it’s floating in the middle of the ocean somewhere. Rodríguez-López and Sariñana connect superbly, too, mastering the song’s tempo shifts flawlessly.

The voices take the reigns once again on the funky, shifting “Asco Que Conmueve los Puntos Erógenos.” Rodríguez-López and Sariñana climb walls with their singing, increasing the tension over a hedge of sound propelled by Pridgen’s unrelenting playing and Rodríguez-López storming guitar.

Marcellus Rodríguez-López hits the keys on the jazzy “Mundo de Ciegos,” giving weight to one of the record’s catchiest pieces.

Xenophanes carries on with Rodríguez-López’s themes of religion and offers a sense of openness and melody throughout its 11 tracks. The strange beauty and luxury of strangeness is still present, of course, and all of the energy and fearlessness that makes him one of today’s most interesting and prolific musicians permeates every note.

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Distrito Federal— Ximena Sariñana y su novio, Omar Rodríguez-López, pasaron del noviazgo al matrimonio y, luego de un embarazo difícil, su bebé nació muerto, así que decidieron comérselo.
Pero, para tranquilidad de todos, eso sólo ocurre en en el video de la canción ‘Asco que Conmueve los Puntos Erógenos’, que forma parte del disco ‘Xenophanes’, de Rodríguez-López.
El músico, integrante de The Mars Volta, dijo que, lejos de buscar polémica con el clip, que él mismo dirigió, sólo quiso mostrar de manera irónica lo que él considera una contradicción en la cultura estadounidense.
“Se comen a los animales, y la manera en la que los matan es cruel. No fue por generar un problema, lo hicimos con una visión divertida, sencilla”, relató el cantautor, quien es vegetariano.
El video se realizó en la casa de Guadalajara, donde viven los novios, y narra la historia de una pareja que se casa luego de que ella rechaza tener relaciones íntimas con él. Después, cuando ella está embarazada, el médico les informa que el feto tiene problemas.
Al nacer, el bebé es bautizado... y luego es cocinado y servido en la mesa, donde también están el galeno y un cura, quienes comen alegremente el singular platillo.
“La religión la tengo presente desde niño. No reniego de ella. A veces digo frases como: ‘¡Me cago en Dios!’, pero luego pienso: ‘¡Ay, Dios, perdóname!”, comentó el productor y cineasta en conferencia telefónica desde Amsterdam.
De acuerdo con su compañía disquera, Universal Music, el video ya fue aceptado por Telehit y EXA TV, pero MTV todavía está considerando si lo transmitirá.
“Escribí el guión sin pensar quién iba a ser el macho y la hembra. No pensé en quién lo quería programar ni en quién lo iba a protagonizar”, añadió el también fotógrafo y editor.
Sariñana y Rodríguez-López se conocieron en la entrega de los Grammy, el año pasado, y desde entonces han compartido algunos proyectos, como aDivino Influjo de los Secretos’.

I am probably the only Pitchfork staffer who unabashedly loves the Mars Volta in all their dumb-assed grandiosity and shameless sprawl. I will suffer through their most meandering fusion-pastiche jams if it means reaching one of their Wagner-by-way-of-Dark Magus climaxes. But even I have to admit there are times where I wish Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-López still had a couple of meat-and-potatoes punk-types around to act as foils. Not to equate the dudes from Sparta with Teo Macero, but at least in the At the Drive-In days you never worried you were footing the bill for someone's wah-wah pedal obsession.

If you're already suspicious of the MV's concept album corpulence, then the idea of a solo project from one of the band's principals, freed from even the loosest commercial restraints, might seem like a definite no-go. And guitarist Omar Rodriguez-López's glut of one-man-band releases this decade-- this is his fifth solo album released in 2009 alone-- have indeed tended toward the sort of free-form/cut-up/noise-for-the-sake-of-it "experiments" that even Volta-lovers might listen to once-and-only-once out of fannish respect. Which is why it's a bit of a surprise that Xenophanes may be the tightest Volta-related product since De-Loused in the Comatorium, back when the tunes were still more riff than solo.

And clearing away the show-off instrumental density-- it's admittedly hard to make claims for the Volta's sense of nuance when 900 people are wailing away in semi-unison, a racket that's often easy to mistake for a Latin-tinged prog band covering The Omen soundtrack-- reveals a delicacy to Omar's music that may surprise. Throw a slo-mo disco beat under the quiet storm of atmospherics in "Ojo al Cristo de Plata", and it could be one of those soft-prog/neo-Balearic dance tunes currently so beloved by young house aesthetes. And "Sangrando Detras de los Ojos" is actually damned beautiful-- a gentle and even-tempoed instrumental, without an attention-straining time-change in earshot-- akin to ATDI's always stirring breakdowns, the very necessary breathers between the band's attempts to knock the sense out of you.

Of course, with typical Volta-ish perversity, "Sangrando" is also the shortest track here. The rest is pretty much what you'd expect: "funk-rock" influenced by the guitar FX dogpile of "Wars of Armageddon" rather than the streamlined party music of "Flash Light" ("Mundo de Ciegos"); portentous melodrama in search of a stadium full of RPG aficionados ("Oremos"); and plinky-plonky electronic miniatures more A-Musik than post-hardcore ("Azoemia"). As always, Rodriguez-López could benefit from an outside editor, since his internal editor seems to have been given his pink slip when ATDI broke up. (There's a sixth solo album arriving before the end of the calendar year.) And only staunch Volta cultists would claim every minute of Xenophanes is worth your precious leisure time. But damn if the best bits don't make an excellent in-car soundtrack for pretending you're on your way to something more dramatic than your day job.

— Jess Harvell, December 11, 2009