XENOPHANES

It's rather interesting seeing way ORL's discography is always in flux between pushing the envelope of his sound and then falling back onto the basics, which in his case are these colourful, psychedelic jams that lean pretty heavily into the sound of latin rock. This undoubtedly falls a bit closer to the latter, feeling rather safe in a lot of regards, and yet, Xenophanes still ends up being one of Omar's better albums both for the way that it both plays this style pretty damn well, but then also adds this extra dimension to it all with the lovely, passionate vocals of Ximena Sariñana. Unlike her previous appearance being essentially singing over less intense versions of pre- existing Omar songs, her role on Xenophanes feels far fresher, as the songs feel as if they've been composed with her contributions in mind, rather than a bit haphazardly altered just to fit them in somewhere. This alone is enough to take this album up a peg or two, which is good since outside of that there isn't really anything separating this album from quite a few of his others, it's just his typical style but very well played, but with a bit extra, and sometimes that's all you need, especially when your typical style is as awesome as it is here. Could honestly make a case for this being one of the best entry points into his discography on the whole, especially if you're already a Mars Volta fan.