20 November 2008 :: look at all these websites, just lying to us

:: Record Review

Mars Volta

Frances the Mute
(Universal; 2005)

Rating: 17%
Combined Rating: 24%

An Open Letter to Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

Dear Cedric and Omar,

I am writing to you to voice my distress over the recent release of Frances the Mute, your second album together as part of the Mars Volta. Yes, this is a review of the album and yes, I did consider writing it in a more conventional review format (even going so far as to complete one), but it didn’t seem as appropriate or sincere. Gimmicky as this “letter” may seem, I mean what I say here, and hope you lend me your ears for a moment because, as a long-time fan of your work, this record feels like a personal affront to me.

Your work with At the Drive-In, as you may recall, was sporadically brilliant -- at its best propulsive and cathartic, stylistically expansive, always concise. So when the band split into two factions – the straight forward emo of Sparta versus your supposedly more exploratory outfit – most held higher hopes for The M.V. And while Sparta has become as boring and derivative as everyone anticipated, I happen to find your work infinitely more troubling, and a great deal harder to listen to.

De-Loused in the Comatorium, the first Mars Volta record, was deeply frustrating, with its considerable virtues marred by vile, ceaseless wankery. Why, I wondered, did you slaughter the otherwise thrilling “Cicatriz ESP” with ambient instrumental pointlessness, which included, among other aural delights, synthesized helicopter sounds? As well, though this had been clear since early in ATDI’s career, you, Cedric, are a truly awful lyricist, and the album’s humorously dense but entirely unrealized concept only served to amplify this fact. Nonetheless, you were still one of the tightest and most technically proficient bands in the world, and I clung to the belief that you would learn from your mistakes the second time around and finally do your talents justice.

I was apprehensive enough when I learned that Frances the Mute was to have five songs clocking in at 76 minutes, and hearing the album itself has only confirmed those fears. The record discards any regard for consistency or brevity you had on your first album, instead bringing all of your worst qualities into stark, unflattering light.

Your instrumental prowess still works very much in your favour. For instance, one could listen to the first five minutes of “Cygnus… Vismund Cygnus,” with its barrage of shifting motifs, and be dazzled. Of course, if that person hears that passage two or three more times, they’ll come to realize that not a single one of those motifs is in any way interesting beyond their technical virtuosity. “The Widow,” at six minutes by far the shortest song here, sits at an uneasy midpoint between Rush and Journey, without being nearly as interesting as even those bands. By the time the turgid “Miranda, That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore,” I begin to think: “Miranda” clocks in at a staggering 13:15, and features, by my count, about three or four different sections. “Arcarsenal,” arguably the single finest ATDI song, had five or six different sections and finished in just under three minutes (and all of this, of course, is to say nothing of the quality of the sections themselves). Frances just doesn’t know when to quit, and your delirious lack of focus -- be it from a dozen too many bong hits, inflated self-importance, or both -- make its 76 minutes seem even longer.

Additionally, and though I’ve said this before, Cedric, you really are a dreadful wordsmith. Frances the Mute continues the free-verse Spanglish babbling of De-Loused, and it comes with just as weighty a concept (this one apparently about a male prostitute, an obscure 50’s movie star, and diaries found in the car of late sound technician Jeremy Ward… or something like that) that falls just as flat as that of its predecessor. Your pompous ramblings about “umbilical syllables” and other unquotably terrible half-rhymes are twice as irritating as they were before; your lyrics were always masturbatory, but now it’s like you’re doing it with a handful of broken glass – I mean, it must hurt for you too.

Aside from a few fleeting sections that sneak their way into some of Frances’ nooks and crannies, there are hardly any virtues to this record at all. You play well – in fact, you play brilliantly – but what you play has become so absurdly ostentatious and hollow that little other than history separates you from a band like, say, Dream Theatre. I almost feel compelled to send a copy of Frances the Mute to every middle school in my area; I imagine it would be a pretty effective method of discouraging drug use. I want to be able to say I think you’ll turn it around, but as I said at the beginning of my letter, I mean what I’m writing here.

I still maintain that “Arcarsenal” is one of the most exciting songs I’ve heard this decade – when you start screaming “beware!!!” over and over at the chorus, it’s all I can do not to take an axe to my bedroom. I was always fascinated by what kind of horrifying, beastly thing you were warning us about. I guess I understand now.

Your dear friend, Matt Stephens :: 2 March 2005 |                

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