CELL PHONE BIKINI

Quite a few interesting parallels to The Mars Volta's Octahedron here in how this album sounds, taking a mellower approach that's still packed with dissonance, providing everything with a strangely hazey effect that makes the album float by regardless of how intricate a specific moment could be. This is immediately notable with the drumming in Amarillo being so rhythmically fun but not doing anything to elevate the energy of the track either, more being a cool element of playfulness than anything else, making the noisier elements on display another interesting trait as well. This constantly subdued feeling made this yet another album that took a bit to really get into to any reasonable degree as well, and I started even thinking that ORL's sound in these was beginning to get a bit tiresome, but upon listening to this a few times, I think that the real thing that is starting to show is the fact that theer's a good reason why some of these stayed as demos. So many moments feel more like fragments of ideas yet to be expanded upon, and this has been going on for a couple of albums now, but while El bien y mal nos une at the very least had a great sound palette that was really nasty and industrial in ways that caused it to make a mark based on how it sounded alone, Cell Phone Bikini doesn't quite have that appeal on me. You've got moments like Amarillo and Sell Myself In which are absolutely delightful, but I can't really say the same thing about songs like To My Fallen Head or Kisses are Fishes, ones that feel stagnant and vaguely unappealing, repeating without even being memorable, culminating in a reasonably unremarkable listen with a few standouts, not doing as much with its muted energy as I'd hoped. Not an album of his I can see myself recommending in many instances.