Photo by Fat Bob
“The Mars Volta”, the highly anticipated seventh studio album is out today. The 14 tracks bravely challenge everything you thought you knew about The Mars Volta, delivering their most exciting, most accessible, and most sophisticated music yet. It shakes loose the band’s long-standing shibboleths – the dizzying, abrasive prog stylings of earlier albums absent.
“The Mars Volta” pulses with subtle brilliance, Caribbean rhythms underpinning sophisticated, turbulent song craft. This is guitarist/composer Omar Rodríguez-López and singer/lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala at their most mature, most concise, most focused. Their sound and fury channeled to greatest effect. A shift in sound. A pop album. In talks with The New York Times and The Guardian, the band explains their “sonic experimentation”. “I wanted to do something else”, says Bixler-Zavala to the Times. “For me, the most exciting new direction is something we haven’t done: to cut things down, to do our version of pop”.
Ahead of the album’s release, the band released the singles and short films for “Blacklight Shine”and “Graveyard Love”. The short films, directed by Rodríguez-López depict the beauty of life in Puerto Rico and rail against U.S. colonial rule. “Vigil”followed with a music video released early August. “This is a heavy record. It’s therapy”, adds Bixler-Zavala. “I’m lucky enough to have someone like Omar in my life, to spearhead that and make it all happen. His patience and tenacity are so key to all this. I’m constantly in awe of how he does things”.
“The Mars Volta” can be streamed and purchased digitally and physically. Digitally, the album is available in Dolby Atmos and spatial audio, and physically on CD and vinyl with Clouds Hill holding an exclusive, kinetic version of the vinyl, which can be ordered here: www.cloudshillshop.com. A special, gold foiled outer sleeve with embossed art is also available on LP, CD and cassette.
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