The Mars Volta: Octahedron (2LP) [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 2LP set spreads eight songs across four sides. Octahedron reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200, and the band themselves called it their pop album.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered

About the album

"This is our 'pop' album," Cedric Bixler-Zavala said of Octahedron, and by The Mars Volta's standards he had a point. After the sprawling intensity of The Bedlam in Goliath, the band went for clearer melodies and more space, while keeping a kaleidoscopic, slightly warped edge underneath.

Omar Rodríguez-López produced and engineered, starting work in 2007 alongside Bedlam before finishing the album in about three weeks in a Brooklyn studio in August 2008. John Frusciante adds guitar, with Juan Alderete on bass, Thomas Pridgen on drums and Marcel Rodríguez-López on keys and mellotron. "Since We've Been Wrong" opens with a slow, aching build, "Teflon" grew from a solo piece Rodríguez-López recorded in 2001, "Cotopaxi" is the full-throttle single, and "With Twilight as My Guide" and "Copernicus" drift into hushed, spacious territory before "Luciforms" closes the album in a final burst of fire.

Critics heard the change straight away. Planet Sound called it the band's most chilled-out and approachable record, and The New York Times and The Boston Globe were both in its corner. Eight songs over four sides, which for this band counts as travelling light.

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Tracklist

Listen

On Clouds Hill (cat# CH185), a reissue of the 2009 album.