"Frances The Mute" - The Mars Volta - A Review

Every once in a while a band rises from the ashes of it's previous incarnation and becomes a lot more interesting and just a better band in general. The Mars Volta is such a band. Unlike a band like Zwan for example, (which consisted of two former members of the Smashing Pumpkins, releases an album, then implodes), The Mars Volta consists of two former members of the band At The Drive In, releases their second album, and currently appear poised to take over the indie rock scene and swallow it whole. This album is impossible to categorize. Personally I hear elements of everything from Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd to Rush to the Desperado movie soundtrack to Hendrix and everything in between. The highlight on this album isn't the gorgeous single currently getting heavy airplay on MTV2, "The Widow" (as great as that song is), it's definitely the Salsa/Hendrix rave up "L'Via L'Viaquez". This song contains some of the most fiery guitar work (by underrated Omar Rodriguez-Lopez) I've heard in a long time, and you wish they would get more self indulgent in this aspect of the album as they have everywhere else. The song cycle is a loose theme of an orphan searching for his parents (band member Jeremy Ward found a diary of an orphan in the backseat of a car while working as a repo man, providing the inspiration for the record. Ward died in 2003 of a drug overdose). This record is quite long clocking in at well over seventy minutes (Cassandra Gemini clocks in at 32:32 itself with it's five movements), but it's worth every minute. Intense, burning, weird, dark, self absorbed in the best possible sense and immensely rewarding it is. 5


1 = Don't purchase in the $1.00 bin at your used record store. Avoid like a plague.
2 = Only if you're desperate for new music. You need it like a hole in the head.
3 = An okay buy, probably just download the tracks you want from I-Tunes.
4 = Buy new the next time you're out and about. A fully satisfying record.
5 = Masterpiece, run and buy today!

Official Website



• MarsVolta.com