In 2003, when The Mars Volta released their debut full-length, De-loused in the Comatorium, the album met extremely mixed reviews. Some hailed the album as a triumphant work of art, successfully blending elements from many different styles into a singular, ambitious masterpiece.
Others dismissed it as a pretentious mash-up of noise and frivolous sonic experiments with no attempt at melody or coherence. One thing that everyone could agree on, however, was even after several plays, the album remained a daunting and sometimes difficult listen.
As Albert Einstein once demonstrated however, perspective is relative, and even people who were able to keep up with the frantic pace of De-loused may still perceive only a blur as The Mars Volta's latest album, Frances the Mute, cruises by with infinite mass and indeterminate length.
Just as on De-loused, Frances creeps in with a deceptively calm intro segment that quickly gives way to barely contained musical pandemonium. On Frances however, there's no forewarning of the whiplash-inducing shift between the first two movements of \Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus,"" the first of many such moments on the album likely to cause accidents for anyone listening on a car stereo.
Even the album's sprints defy predicable endings, often slamming into a Cedric Bixler Zavala choral harmony for three-quarters of a second before taking off again to the accompaniment of salsa-like percussion or breaking down abruptly into eerie samples and typewriter clicks.
Halfway into the disc's 77 minutes most will be lost in sound-it may be helpful to reaffirm which way is up by dropping a tennis ball.
That said about the peculiarities of the album's listening experience, Frances will provide fans of The Mars Volta with an unexpected gift, an album just as far ahead of its predecessor as that album was beyond anything else around when it was released.
People who delighted in sifting through the layers of De-loused have the opportunity to explore an even more complex and varied soundscape with Frances the Mute.
The tradeoff in this situation is a loss in accessibility, especially for newcomers to the band. While the better part of the album is an intriguing listen, the seamless flow from track to track and warped aesthetic make the disc an acquired taste. Only the album's first single, ""The Widow,"" bares any resemblance whatsoever to the structure of a typical song.
Lyrically, Frances is much what fans would expect from Zavala. Stream-of-consciousness musings about carrion, ""womb chrome"" and ""worms crawlin' out of your head"" rule the day, and though the inclusion of song lyrics does help to clear things up to a degree, Spanish and Latin dictionaries would also go a long way towards making sense of the album's over arching themes.
On Frances the lyrics, like the music, only give up their secrets slowly, and if the listener is persistent.
Though The Mars Volta probably won't earn many new fans with Frances the Mute, they have succeeded in demonstrating, beyond a doubt, their stubborn refusal to follow convention. For that reason a Mars Volta release, whether excellent or atrocious, will never be boring.
