February 27th, 2005

Well, Tues­day, March 1st marks the release of one of MY most antic­i­pated albums in quite some time. The Mars Volta will be putting out their 2nd full length album, Frances the Mute. I got a hold of a pre-​release copy a few months ago, and despite the crappy qual­ity of the ver­sion I found, it has been a steady member of my playlist lately. While only con­tain­ing 5 tracks, the album spans almost 80 min­utes, and does not dis­ap­point if you’re a Mars Volta fan.

Some of it is a bit … self-​indulgent, or pre­ten­tious … with the ambi­ent sounds going on in parts for way too long, but over­all it’s one of the most amaz­ing albums I’ve heard in quite some time. The Mars Volta does such a great job of mixing ele­ments of indie rock, metal, prog rock, and tons of other sub­gen­res into a very cohe­sive, pow­er­ful series of songs. While they’ll never call it a ‘concept album’, Frances the Mute is essen­tially that. The silence between songs is a dis­trac­tion to the guys, and they do a fine job of making the entire album flow from start to finish, taking you on an extra­or­di­nary journey.

Some of the “movements” are some of the most chaotic, fren­zied songs I’ve heard from them, others (like The Widow) remind me a lot of Tel­e­va­tors, a slower ballad type song that slowly brings you to another hard hit­ting song. The final song on this CD is almost a half hour long, so there is a lot for everyone.

The cool thing is, I’ve been seeing reviews all over for this album before it’s even out. That’s very promis­ing, as I’d like to see them have some com­mer­cial suc­cess. Due to the simple fact that all but one song on this album is less than 8 min­utes (The Widow), it’s not likely they’ll get a ton of radio air­play. How­ever, even the simple fact they’re get­ting such crit­i­cal acclaim should help them do well in stores.

Anywho, I rec­om­mend this album whole heart­edly. It did take a week or so to really grow on me, but it’s quickly become my favorite album in quite some time. I’m look­ing for­ward to get­ting my hands on the final copy, which will undoubt­edly sound ten times better.

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2 Responses to “The Marts Volta - Frances the Mute”

1. Daniel says:
   March 1st, 2005 at 5:54 pm

   As a side­note, Frances the Mute is avail­able on iTunes for 7.99.
2. Cory says:
   March 21st, 2005 at 8:51 pm

   Some­where along the line, Daniel, I real­ized that you not only have good taste in music, but that it is very sim­i­lar to my own to some degree. I picked up this cd this after­noon and it’s excel­lent. It’s sort of like Sonic Youth meets The Dark­ness meets Soul Live. Best Buy is fea­tur­ing it for $9.99 (I don’t know if Best Buy pro­motes iden­ti­cally across the nation).