There’s a couple plucky piano solos, but it’s mostly carried by sincere craft and sensitivity. A cut like “Diamond Teeth” goes full-on ballad with just piano, light guitar, and Alves’ voice belting out some heartfelt lines. For those that like it, “Arcos Del Amor” (‘ arches of love‘) is a Spanish language burner of a track with quick drums and wavy guitars and synths. Even when things are slower like “Houses Full Of Hurt”, the percussion knocks formidably as the vocals don’t ease in their projection and strength. This is kind of the theme, or at least common tone, throughout much of Part I, the longest and most bombastic on offer. She’s capable of getting quite sultry with her voice, and the jazzy keys are the icing on the damn cake. Take a peek at “Bitter Tears” from Part I for a good example. Alves’ voice is remarkably suited for that kind of environment. Although there’s a strong rock presence here from everyone involved, it’s also got a loungy feel. To be honest though, this was almost all new to me due to my unfamiliarity, and even if you worship the man, it’s still worth listening to these iterations as they’ve gotten a considerable overhaul with a newer line-up and polish.įor one, the singer on these tapes, Virginia García Alves, fits the material better to me. It’s also not entirely new material for ORL – in fact, all of these songs originate from one of his previous solo albums, chiefly Umbrella Mistress and Roman Lips, from which six and three tracks are redone, respectively. It’s rock, but like a diet variety if you use The Mars Volta‘s eclectic sound as any sort of benchmark, less interested in illusory overload of the senses and more in the emotionality of it all. First, I do want to stress and maybe set an expectation for y’all that this is pretty different from the ORL that I, and likely you, know. Well, it would be a little weird to just review Part I only at this point, so here we go, we’re gonna talk about all parts. What? Looking further, all three parts are to be released on a triple LP bundle on July 24, but seem to be going for a staggered release digitally. After listening to the album a couple times and thinking about what I wanted to say about it here, I found out that not only was Part I already out, but so was Part II. I assumed future parts would follow later in the year. I signed up to review The Clouds Hill Tapes, Pt. I didn’t keep up with his solo stuff much because of, well, the reasons I just mentioned – couldn’t keep up. Did they never sleep back then or just do a lot of cocaine? Who knows.Īnyway, ORL is The Dude™, and I am forever indebted to him for his work in The Mars Volta alone. Seriously, you usually only see a discography this big attributed to one name when it’s a jazz artist from the ’60s or something, when they released multiple LPs in a year with ease. In the aughts, he pervaded the music tastes of me and many of my friends one way or another, whether with the progressive and psyched-out The Mars Volta, post-hardcore laureates At The Drive-In, or maybe another project from his ever-growing solo career. For those that aren’t as aware though, ORL was integral for a lot of the music of our generation. I imagine that Omar Rodríguez-López is someone who doesn’t need much of an intro he may, in fact, be the sole reason you clicked on this review.
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