The Mars Volta - 'Frances The Mute' (Universal)
5/5
By: JJ Florio
Ambition is a concept of human endeavour that is comparative and ultimately realised by the relatively few. Take the Great Pyramid in Giza; a task so mammoth, and almost stupid in its ambitiousness, that when finished, seemed to render all previous architectural achievements obsolete (and was incidentally the tallest building in the world until the Eiffel Tower was completed).
True ambition seems to be an attitude; a driving force that realises what was once considered to be the impossible. The bloke whose idea it was to drag a large number of huge rocks across the British countryside to build Stonehenge had it; Michelangelo displayed it his in redecoration of the Sistine Chapel; and my word, The Mars Volta appear to have it, too.
'Frances The Mute', the second studio offering from a band whose core members rose from the ashes of the performance art/punk outfit At The Drive-In have produced a record that is so gargantuan in its size and power that it almost defies believe; in this beast's wake, the scale of Muse is reduced to pop, the tortured lyrics of Marilyn Manson appear contrived and the sappy heaviness of nu-metal become child's play.
History has shown us that in the hands of many, a big concept does not always achieve results. Rick Wakeman's idea of setting the Arthurian legend to an hour of synth-led 70's progressive rock and then staging the show on ice is an eloquent example of laughably misguided ambition, but occasionally even the most far fetched flights of fancy are wonderfully realised. How we would have loved to have been there when The Mars Volta first pitched the idea of 'Frances The Mute' to the record-label; 'Well, yeah, we are going to make a record that's over 70 minutes long with five 'songs' on it, employing a full orchestra and two members of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and, we're going to produce it ourselves. Cool?' Not only have they done this but also, it's worked, lord how it's worked.
And now the truly difficult bit; what the record sounds like. Firstly get out of your head the traditional notion of song because, here, it doesn't exist. The album is more symphonic in its structural approach, split into five main sections that serve like classical movements to a whole work, harmonic and melodic themes repeated and developed throughout. This is one of the most thematically rich and almost impossibly complex records to grace our speakers for an aeon; the depth that it holds for the listener appears limitless.
So, archly, admirably, The Mars Volta have stretched the perceived boundaries of what a current band line-up can achieve, veering from Led Zeppelin-scale riffs with ferocious intensity to heady and darkly spaced a-tonal sections that are reminiscent in their melancholia of Pink Floyd's 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn'. Passages that are lightening fast, and precisely executed in the vain of the Marhavistna Orchestra, develop into full, free improvisations that bring into mind the 'Bitches Brew' era of Miles Davis. This said, and although many influences are present, to suggest that 'Frances The Mute' is simply a collage of stolen inspiration is a major injustice and detracts from the fact that here is a band that has delivered a work of peerless vision. In short, The Mars Volta are a group of musicians, producers and writers that appear to be unrivalled in the virtuosity of what they yearn to achieve.
Although the album contains sections of strange and poetic beauty the overall feel is one of truly heavy and dark emotional intensity. Lyrical derivation seems to spawn from the classic Spanish literary tradition of writers such as Frederico Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda with the use of recurring themes such as the concept of motherhood, death and blood, as well as many of the sections being sung entirely in Spanish. And lines like 'she was a mink hand-job in sarcophagus heels' (now, that's awesome) and 'he's got fasting black lungs, clove-splintered shards, they're the kind that will talk through a wheezing of coughs' are delivered with a relentless passion which is alarmingly violent in fervour. Such heavy lyrical mode is echoed in the overall clatter - one brought out by the brilliantly intricate and sonically rich production, aiding to provide the most integrated and complete albums of recent years with each individual element, no matter how small, serving the other. The result? A whole experience, in turn, undeniable in its sheer brooding power.
It is, at this point, that the words fail. To try and classify the sitting further is as futile as giving a quantum physics lecture solely through the medium of dance. Go out, buy it, strap yourself in and, like us, marvel - for here is a rare statement of awesomely prodigious supremacy.
Artists in this article: The Mars Volta
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