The Mars Volta Go Pop!

[The Mollusk]

Damn who knew these spicy motherfuckers of unnecessarily meandering twaddle, recording a cicada chirping on a djembe while a tuneless electric guitar wails backwards in a cave of the mind, baffling Storm Thorgerson adoration and "yes, it's another concept album about someone we knew who died" were back with a new album? And that the album is their most pointedly accessible record to date by a seriously considerable stretch? I just found out!

Yeah, The Mars Volta's debut Deloused in the Comatorium is easily one of the best albums I've ever heard. Such a fantastic transition from the already faultless blistering post-hardcore of Relationship of Command, launching them into Latino psych-prog for a project which - when it started out, at least - was as as brilliantly arresting as it could have ever been. Perfect album. After that? Well, it starts to go a bit south and then it plummets pretty hard. The later albums are littered with great ideas but with that litter comes ... more litter, the bad kind of litter, like tear-arsing through a rubbish dump on a quad bike, getting caked in shite but occasionally unearthing some really cool shit like a sword or a pristine pair of trainers, boxed, in your size.

Anyway. When I read this article today detailing their comeback and that it was spearheaded by an album which looks set to be less than 50 mins in length with many of the tracks not tipping over the 4 min mark, and that they'd taken a boat load (lol) of influence from yacht rock and other more straightforward pop sensibilities, I was surprised and intrigued. When they want to, this band can write gorgeous soaring melodies packed to the gills (blub blub) with heart-squeezing emotional clout. So a pop album after years of disappointment followed by years of silence? You have my attention.

They've dropped three tracks so far and I gotta say on first listen I am impressed. I've been listening to a fair bit of música popular Brasileira recently and have gotten quite the taste in my mouth for the unassuming yet gorgeously alluring melodies, the balmy yet breezy atmosphere, it's a serious vibe. So to hear TMV knocking out a similar energy but still letting their trademark murky rainforest psychedelia hang in the air surrounding it was something I found myself very suddenly and positively taken aback by. These tracks are really good!

But hey, don't take my word for it, hear for yourself!

[the ouch cube]

I am looking forward to this. I found a lot of the whingeing about TMV ("pretentious prog rockers", etc.) hugely irritating and wilfully in denial of the fact that they are taut, funky and danceable in a way few other progressive acts have ever even approached, plus their choruses are ferociously catchy to the point where they almost slice your throat with sheer intensity, like few groups' hooks this side of Killing Joke. Even their most wilfully cacophonous and fuck-off album (Amputecture) has catchiness to a degree that shames most chart pop music.

Also love the way they genuinely live inside a Burroughs or Barry Gifford novel; drugs and occult rituals and full-on cocks-out madness. Didn't know Cedric was a Scientologist for a while, the silly sod, but he isn't anymore

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Not feeling this stuff at all but I'm happy for them that they're following their creative impulses instead of going through the motions for a payday like most reformed bands

[thugler]

Like you said, deloused is fucking ridiculously good, and doesn't seem to get the praise it deserves as an all time classic. What annoyed me about them a bit beyond that was live they were a bit dodgy, incapable of pulling off what they could do in the studio. Not in the way that it's 'too free/freaky for me' or anything, it just didn't capture the same vibe at all, and it slided a bit towards that on the records too. I still think particularly Frances and bits of the other records have their moments. This one is intriguing, I've not totally clicked with it yet though.

[drummersaredeaf]

I'm really glad the consensus seems to be that the later stuff is wank. I caught them in a 30 min slot in 2003 and bought deloused the next day. I saw them headline a year or two later (Frances tour?) and found it tedious in the extreme. A set nudging 3 hours including protracted segments cunting about with a keyboard arp and some lights.

That performance saw me lose interest but whenever I saw them referred to subsequently it was always with great praise. I just could not be arsed to wade through all the noise. For once I feel vindicated in missing out.

[Critcho]

Relationship Of Command (plus ATDI's raucous Jools Holland performance back in 00) pretty much single handedly turned me on to post-hardcore and a whole world of intense music I never thought would be for me. I was very disappointed by the split, but then Deloused In The Comotorium landed just as I'd developed a taste for classic prog, and to my amazement was maybe even better. So Cedric and Omar have a lifetime pass from me.

A lifetime pass that results in me listening to a lot of very long records that aren't really as good!

That said, a lot of the defining Mars Volta qualities - overblown song lengths, latin influences, wank jams - don't really show up in full until the second album. They're ragged and sloppy and indulgent (and annoying, sometimes) but when I'm in the right mood I find a lot to enjoy there.

As for them going pop with the new stuff, they'd already started pulling back from the raucous prog theatrics with the last couple of albums, you could almost see the new songs as a more cheerful extension of some of the more traditionally song-writery stuff they were doing on Noctourniquet.

The first two new songs they put out I like quite a bit, so I'm mildly optimistic. The latest one Vigil is pretty much a straight lighters-in-the-air classic rock radio ballad, which takes a bit of getting used to coming from them, but we'll see.

[thugler]

I always enjoyed their pre-deloused ep 'tremulant' too, a bit closer to the atdi stuff. Eunuch provocateur is a banger

[Capt.Midnight]

It's a shame Jon Theodore left, he gave them an irreplaceable GROOVE.

[sevendaughters]

meanwhile us Defacto fans get shit on again

[purlieu]

Yeah, the last two albums before their hiatus were definitely heading in a more overly 'accessible' direction; still, I never imagined them making anything like 'Vigil'. I suppose this is still the band who made 'The Widow'.

Deloused is my favourite, but I actually have a major soft spot for Frances the Mute. I think it's the structure, the way 'Cassandra Gemini' ends by not only having the song's opening chorus section re-emerging from a mire of endless noodling, but then returning to 'Sarcophagi' from right at the beginning of the album. It makes the whole thing feel worth it, even if it was trying at times. I have a very fond memory of reaching that moment when I first heard the album. It's a shame 'Cassandra Gemini' isn't presented as a single 32 minute track on the CD. The reasoning for that always baffled me:

Because of disputes with Universal Records, "Cassandra Gemini" (listed as "Cassandra Geminni" on most versions of the album) was arbitrarily split into eight tracks on the CD version, taking up tracks 5 through 12, since the band would otherwise only be paid an EP's wages for a 5 track album.

When did this rule come in? There are so many prog and prog-adjacent albums with only two or four side-long tracks on that are classified as albums. They should have just put the title track in there too and done it as a double CD.
The later albums never did too much for me, although I think The Bedlam in Goliath has one of the best starts to any album I've heard. 'Aberinkula' opens like it's halfway through the most intense chorus ever. I don't think the album really lets up again after that either.

"She was a mink handjob in sarcophagus heels." I think I wrote a pisstake Mars Volta song at one point. Just the lyrics. I must track that down.

[thugler]

It's a shame Jon Theodore left, he gave them an irreplaceable GROOVE.

Agree. The other guy was too much of a muso mega wank musician. As good at drums as he is, didn't have that groove. Theodore has a nice bonzo ish sound. I can always spot the ultra muso guys in bands, they stick out like a sore thumb as too clinical and not loose enough.

Yeah, the last two albums before their hiatus were definitely heading in a more overly 'accessible' direction; still, I never imagined them making anything like 'Vigil'. I suppose this is still the band who made 'The Widow'.

Deloused is my favourite, but I actually have a major soft spot for Frances the Mute. I think it's the structure, the way 'Cassandra Gemini' ends by not only having the song's opening chorus section re-emerging from a mire of endless noodling, but then returning to 'Sarcophagi' from right at the beginning of the album. It makes the whole thing feel worth it, even if it was trying at times. I have a very fond memory of reaching that moment when I first heard the album. It's a shame 'Cassandra Gemini' isn't presented as a single 32 minute track on the CD. The reasoning for that always baffled me:When did this rule come in? There are so many prog and prog-adjacent albums with only two or four side-long tracks on that are classified as albums. They should have just put the title track in there too and done it as a double CD.
The later albums never did too much for me, although I think The Bedlam in Goliath has one of the best starts to any album I've heard. 'Aberinkula' opens like it's halfway through the most intense chorus ever. I don't think the album really lets up again after that either.

"She was a mink handjob in sarcophagus heels." I think I wrote a pisstake Mars Volta song at one point. Just the lyrics. I must track that down.

Agree on Frances being the best of the rest and actually pretty dope at times. The actual song frances the mute, left off and released seperately is a total banger. Despite the several minutes of crackly silence before it kicks off probably putting some people off.

This thread has properly taken me back.

[MrMrs]

Stun

[Critcho]

Early reactions to this have been glowing, so far...

[sevendaughters]

I recently listened to Frances the Mute for the first time since it came out and loved it. First track is a banger.

[SteveDave]

Someone recommended this to me on Friday and I enjoyed the first 5 or 6 songs and then it all became a bit samey (not exactly samey but nothing stuck out to me) and the last song sounded like Evanescence.

[Critcho]

Yeah I gave it a couple of listens on Friday, there are a half dozen or so tracks that I'd say are good examples of what I might imagine 'pop' MV songs to be like, but a lot of it tends to blur together in an inoffensive, not all that memorable way.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

still not really feeling this one but for some reason Meccamputechture sounded very fine when I played it the other day. maybe that's an unpopular opinion, I'm not sure. they kind of lose me after that besides the odd track (Aberinkula, Teflon)

[The Mollusk]

I'm all for the band going pop and I think the lead singles were largely really good, but this ethos clashes with when the band plugs back into its psych/prog roots. It's over produced for starters, like whacking the drums high and fat in the mix as if it's a bloody Tame Impala album yet sacrificing some far more interesting instrumentation which is oddly muted, for example the keyboard solo on "Equus 3" or the mellotron on "Palm of Crux". Conversely the extremely bland lead guitar that closes "Cerulea" is high to the point of being actually irritating and Cedric's voice can be very grating. Where he used to soar on the band's older material at its most accessible, here the repeated choruses on "Cerulea" and "Collapsible Shoulders" are again insistently annoying.

My other major beef is I cannot for the life of me figure out why they made the conscious effort to cut all their songs off abruptly at the end. Most of the songs sound like they could have a good extra 30 seconds of wind down time and some would be greatly improved by this, namely because those songs actually do not sound finished and as if the band ran out of ideas, which is shocking when you consider who is writing these songs. But then only just over half of the tracks are any good and the rest are merely okay or verging on dull. You'd think they would excel at a project like this and so it's a huge disappointment. Considering how straight they're playing it, it's weirdly messy and unfocused at times and could have strongly benefited from some extra work. I'm let down.

[sevendaughters]

I'm against bands going pop (not really, do what you feel, but I am against bands arriving at pop out of creative inertia in the same way actors and directors think doing a comedy is less effort - no, it's more) but across 25 years of music Omar and Ced have not exactly ever shown economy and efficiency to be part of their arcarsenal. Their take on post-hardcore involved more left-turns than a NASCAR race and then they get to prog where they start to out-Yes Yes. You can't just rock up at a genre you've been waggling your dick at for a quarter of a century and have it be good.

Not everything on this hilariously self-titled record (this is the real us!) is awful, but it is all just quite forgettable. I think they sketched some of the formal exercises in recent popular music and tried to copy them, but I don't think they understand the magical forces or the attitude implicit in good pop.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Sometimes it almost feels like Omar has so many ideas that he loses interest in things before he's really finished them, do you know what I mean? There's loads of cool bits on his solo albums but I don't know how many of them are really consistently good, besides Old Money.

[sevendaughters]

I quite like that he has a bajillion solo albums that hardly anyone has heard, but yeah, it sort of speaks to someone who is an alien to perfectionism. Anyone know where to even start there? Or whether to bother?

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I definitely liked Old Money a lot, but to be fair most of the good stuff is on the Telesterion compilation

[The Mollusk]

Don't bother with Cryptomnesia by El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. It could go either way having three key members of TMV playing with Zach Hill on drums, could either be a bizarrely streamlined powerhouse record or a great hulking ugly mess. Spoiler: it's the latter.

IIRC the album Omar did with John Frusciante was some very pleasant stuff, just two guitars, nothing mental.

[Critcho]

You can't just rock up at a genre you've been waggling your dick at for a quarter of a century and have it be good.

I wouldn't say they're entirely anti-pop, there were hooks galore on the first couple of Volta albums. Antemasque even put out this track which might be poppier than anything on this new one:

Antemasque was an underrated project I thought, it felt refreshingly light on its feet compared to what they'd been doing for years before it. I wouldn't have minded them keeping it going.

The band name might not have come across so well at the height of covid though.