Omar Rodriguez Lopez
Old Money
Stones Throw Records

Old Money, a solo instrumental release from Omar Rodriguez Lopez, lead guitarist of jazz-rock stalwarts The Mars Volta, relies on the power of repetition, the dulling effect of which is mitigated by mutation and the omnipresent threat of explosion.

Loosely inspired by his upper-class childhood, the similarity of the words used to describe the album’s professed subject matter and progressive rock nearly eliminates the already small possibility of reading social commentary into an instrumental album. Instead, the fun seems to come from song titles like “I Like Rockefellers’ First Two Albums, But After That…” which gently satirize the album’s supposed excess and indulgences, or better yet, mock the practice of associating progressive rock with a social class to which it has no real connection. Lopez opens the album with “The Power of Myth,” a forceful, Volta-esque track foreshadowing many of the album’s most prominent melodies. But any continuation of the first track’s themes is delayed and any momentum immediately abandoned on the second number, “How To Bill The Bilderberg Group,” as an unmelodic chorus of alien voices is strangled out of Lopez’s guitar.

Not yet ready to explore the mellow underbelly that features prominently on the second half of the album, the third track, “The Population Council’s Wet Dream,” delivers an early crescendo. A simple riff slowly mutates as industrial loops, and metallic rhythms are gradually introduced to the composition, continuing to morph for nearly three minutes until all that remains of the original riff are two plaintive notes. These notes, still prominent among the now clamorous backdrop, repeat until overtaken by a guitar solo, which is in turn overtaken in the midst of deconstruction by something resembling the original melody, which eventually dissolves into electronic static. After climaxing, the album proceeds much slower, only sporadically returning to Lopez’s characteristically frenetic pace. That is, until the welcome arrival of the epic, nine-minute, album-closing jam, “Old Money.”

Cotton Jones
Paranoid Cocoon
Suicide Squeeze Records

Another folk-pop revivalist outfit in the mode of Fleet Foxes and Co., Cotton Jones also utilizes heavy reverb to beef up the delivery of mindlessly rustic rhymes. The band, fronted by Michael Nau8212;formerly of Page France8212;sticks to the recipe and the result is pleasant8212;imagine a simple-minded Lee Hazlewood8212;if rarely dynamic. Nau’s vocals are more powerful than they were in his Page France days, so much that the presence of talented back-up singer Whitney McGraw seems an afterthought of ambience. In fact, outside of the minor pop appeal of the bass-heavy first third, his vocals might be the highlight of the album. Paranoid Cocoon’s problem8212;the album’s final six tracks aren’t nearly as worthwhile as the first four8212;is a common one and those searching for the cause would be wise to take a close look at the lyrics. Devoid of pathos, humor, and even the minor poetic flourishes found in the work of his contemporaries, Nau’s words are unable to propel the album forward when the hooks and reverb disappear.