★★

Omar Rodríguez-López’sSworn Virginsis less an album and more a garage sale.

It’s the first of 12 solo records Rodríguez-López is releasing this year. Yup, 12. The 40-year-old Puerto Rican of The Mars Volta and At The Drive-In fame has sifted through his personal works from 2008 to 2013 and laid them on the lawn.

If it wasn’t for the label Ipecac’s mission to be “a place where bands we admire have the freedom to release music they might not be able to, or want to, release on other labels”, Sworn Virgins would probably never have seen the light of day. It’s experimental and raw – the recordings are live one-take cuts, bar a few rerecorded vocals. It sounds like an entire prog rock band, but it’s not. It’s just Rodríguez-López and Deantoni Parks, also formerly of The Mars Volta, whacking away on the drums. A critical component to this illusion is the use of a sample pedal, but it’s a little undercooked – generally, practice makes better.

It’s only the first of a dozen releases, yet this album alone comes across as overly self-indulgent. Why not offer us the gold, rather than making us wade knee-deep through sewers of jam sessions?

If you’re into Omar Rodríguez-López, this is a way to intimately get to know him. But so is sifting through his trash.

Omar Rodríguez-López’sSworn Virginsis out now through Ipecac.

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