The Mars Volta CLOUDS HILL

Thought the Mars Volta had confounded you enough? Nope, here’s their pop album.

Never underestimate The Mars Volta’s ability to surprise even their most ardent fans. Going back to the earliest days of their first band, At The Drive-In, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López have been musical chameleons, shapeshifting from artful, furious hardcore punk to make way for the explosion of prog rock, jazz, alt.rock and Latin beats of The Mars Volta. And now, coming a decade and a short-lived split after their last album, Noctourniquet, they have boldly and unexpectedly gone pop, with their self-titled new collection landing neatly between smooth, espradille-clad yacht rock and slinky R&B.

There’s a darkness at the heart of it all. The band came to a halt in 2013 after Bixler-Zavala joined the Church of Scientology, ostensibly to try to deal with a crippling weed habit. He did not have a great experience and has since been vocal in his criticism of the organisation – not least because his wife, actor Chrissie Carnell, was among the members to accuse fellow Scientologist Danny Masterson (her former co-star on That ’70s Show and one-time partner) of rape (something he denies).

Bixler-Zavala’s fury at that hellish predicament is plain throughout this record. ‘I’ll shine the blackest light, to the culprit on all fours,’ he sings on Blacklight Shine. In times past, this sentiment would have been backed with an impenetrable wall of noise. Here it’s met with MOR funk worthy of Hall & Oates, backed with slinky rattlesnake percussion. Arguably, this is the first time in The Mars Volta that Bixler-Zavala’s voice has taken centre stage, Rodríguez-López’s firework fretwork taking a backseat for a more subtle instrumentation, not least on Shire Story. A moonlit take on R&B that owes a debt to Prince, it’s romantic, even sexy, in a way that is completely new to them.