the confessions of a mars volta apologist
and now i shall tackle what i feel to be my first serious use of this blog. in case it is not clear, i take my rock music pretty serious and the mars volta is a prime example. my relationship to the volta is long and storied. in the melancholy wake of at the drive-in i came across some early demo songs by the sci-fi sinister sounding new project on the internets. one would end up on the tremulant ep as concertina, in essentially the same form. one really blew me away. i downloaded it as eat the sun. it is basically a streamlined, stripped-down version of what appeared as Cicatriz ESP on the debut album. i was hooked and anxiously awaiting full-length output by the crazy elements of atdi. there were unmistakable drive-in elements in cedric's screech and vaguely threatening lyrical content. omar (yeah i call them both by first names only anymore) could still expertly employ the stutter-thrash, bizarre voice chorus rock outs. but they were (excuse the rock cliche) stretching out on these tracks.
let me state for the record (should i be brought before rock authenticity court, the ghost of lester bangs presiding...bailiff - little ghost) that relationship of command is really one of the greatest rock albums of my days and i believe it will only gain in stature. the album is screaming immediacy and gut-punch impact. and its whack as hell. it sounds so much more vital and honest than any rock i have heard since. i even think i believe that. i was talking with my good friend dave frank about intially viewing the one armed scissor video and i think it serves as a good example of how atdi came across. somewhere in deep, not too hip texas some crazy punks formed into a visceral onslought of raw power. the end result (and relationship of command is really where they hit the mark with blistering consistancy) is a brutal and bewildering experience. something like watching the MC5 stomp the shit out of emo in the parking lot of a dingy truck-stop. so for the record i dont think that the mars volta have yet created anything so timeless as relationship of command but to me thats kind of like saying that the plastic ono band wasn't as good as abbey road.
so back to the voltage, i finished my first year of college pretty psyched for the forthcoming De-Loused in the Comatorium. some friends had it and complained of rick rubin's over-production. i picked the cd up at bullmoose and complained of the retarded cover art. either way you put those liner notes in it looks like an unpromising, sci-fi, adventure novel. even in my growing fanaticism i cannot bring myself to forgive them this thoughtless offense.
upon listening to the album the vocal effects and rubin virtual arena were a bit offputting. i mean it was basically hard for us (friends and i) to not hear relationship of command. with time though the rock would not be denied and i warmed to this. certainly more so than to the watery, unremarkable Sparta.
a little uncertainly i purchased a ticket to see the volta at the axis in boston. the ticket was cheap and the album was pretty cool and what i knew of the onstage antics of cedric and omar...well it'd probably be cool. i was in no way prepared for what happened that night in july of 2003.
a band called rye coalition opened and pretty much sucked. as i have said before this really only aides a show though i can think of precious few who could have set the bar too high for what followed. in the darkness the volta began Son et Lumiere. the crowd was packed in, sweating profusely and clenching fists and biting tongues in agonizing anticipation of the noise about to explode from the tinkling keyboard line. if you've never been to the axis it is the tiny neighbor to the kind of stupid avalon. what will always be to me the unassuming alternative that rocks much harder. it will always be the site of what was a near religious experience of rock and roll music.
Inertiatic ESP opened up and electrified the crowd. if this music sounded jarring on record it was damn near about to break apart live. everyone, crowd included, seemed to be doing all they could to keep up with the demon-possesed groove. drum fills skittered in and out of propulsive bass and the slashes and stabs of guitar. then they got to the keyboard break and could we jump and squirm quick enough to provide the reciprocal energy to keep this thing alive? well fuck yes actually we could. ikey owens pressed his keyboard into the stage and the band bashed onward in their place. and then it was relieved. the tightly wound, expertly crafted, anxiety we had all been enmeshed in gave way to languid guitar and an approximate croon from cedric. just enough to lull us unprepared right into the crackling assault of roulette dares. and yes they proceeded to play de-loused from start to finish.
i feel a certain strange kinship to phish fans who say you can't understand the music until you've experienced it in the live setting after seeing this show. i was a fan of the mars volta for sure but seeing the live show transcended popular rock for me and what was an affinity became an obsession. as i stumbled from the axis that night, without the aid of any substances, i was somewhere between giddy and wiped out and if the metaphor isn't yet clear enough let me go the full length of it to say the experience was orgasmic. it was a physical, aesthetic engagment and i wanted it to happen again. where the record indulges in extended ambient sections that all but end songs (well cicatriz ESP specifically) the live volta let omar rodriguez-lopez shred unfettered. long, twisting-whack guitar solos filled this space and gave space-rock and prog-metal a new and large place in my heart. but the volta doesn't like these categories and a fan-boy such as i will give them their full due.
in point of fact no categories seem entirely fair, and really don't for any good rock act. when it is good something inexplicable and complex occurs which will not be neatly summed up. this was the most bashing-abrasive punk rock i'd ever been bludgeoned with and it was the most ethereal psychedelia and just when it made you comfortable to jam on one it would hit ya with the other. thats not even mentioning machine-like precise metal solos and hard-core rumbling drums and soulful organ workouts. it was too quick and bizarre and i loved every minute of it.
and so began a zealotous phase wherein i told everyone i knew who liked to rock that they NEEDED to see the mars volta live. i probably told a lot of people who were totally unreceptive too. (my mother made fun of me the other day for sitting in front of the computer with amputechture crying out in ecstasy, "this is soooooo good, i'm so pumped about this new mars volta album, i'm so glad i found it")
and the summer plodded on in a haze of boring work days, brilliant beach days, and i fear a great deal of marijuana smoke. and lots of other music. rjd2 and air and boom-bip and built to spill. and fall brought the distorted reality 7" and soon after the death of elliott smith and i was distracted by a million other things. there are of course a million other potential essays of equal self-indulgent length and melodramatic rock proselytizing here but...for another day.
so fast forward to the spring of my junior year, 2005 when my good friend neal daniel sends me an electronic copy of the forthcoming Frances the Mute. i had gone many moons without rocking any voltage but my dormant obsession was not entirely depleated. as anyone who, with age, finds more and more to love in short, well-crafted pop music (elliott leads to zombies and to pet sounds...etc) i was wary of tracks that had no regard for the 3 minute rule, or the 10 minute rule for that matter. maybe the guys have gone all jazz record on us i thought and readied my ears and brain.
structurally this may be jazzy but the album opener, Cygnus...Vismond Cygnus, sounds only tangentially jazzy, like maybe the ghost of Ornette Coleman wailing through about a dozen Marshall stacks. (i know ornette's still alive but, c'mon...nothin wails like a ghost) in short i was totally sold. the thrash riff opener acknowledged the hard rocking of de-loused and did it one better. it was like the blazing culmination of tremulant's eunuch provocateur, but setting the tone for the entire album. it was like if ian mckaye gave up on straight-edge and snorted up a shit load of blow, gobbled some mushrooms and while staring into the gaping maw of a giant tarantula (in his mind) began to rock a guit-piece. dare i say it was akin to putting nevermind into my walkman and for the first time being bowled over by the clean intro which gave way to distorted monster guitar and ass-kicking drum counts of smells like teen spirit. yeah, it was a little like that.
but the volta had really amped up on Frances and almost too much in terms of listening through. even more than de-loused this album bled all together and left little time to catch one's breath or recover. the opener starts out heavy and only moves through extended suites of heavy riffing/screeching and stuttering rhythms...crazy rhythms. by the time the widow rolls around one has been treated to more balls-out rocking than some entire albums ever achieve. and when i hear this tune i can't really sit still so i'm pretty exhausted after 13 minutes.
recently in discussion of the mars volta i have come to feel ostracized in the manner of a religious zealot. rather than arguing what i think are salient points people back out, kind of uncomfortable in the face of my fanatical insistence that the band rocks and in fact only gets better. though it is a very tough call i still hold the evidently unpopular belief that Frances the Mute was an improvement on the template of De-Loused in the Comatorium. and mostly i guess i think that because of L'Via L'Viaquez which may very well be the best recorded mars volta to date.
track three begins with a blaring funky strut that cedric shrieks over. upon first listen i was vaguley worried about how good this danceable mars volta would be. but they pull it off expertly with the funky strumming building into nightmare rock only to relapse into a simmering piano-driven shuffle. and back and forth and repeat. and i cannot grow tired of this. it is the same building tension and release of de-loused but more subtle here, instead of false endings or delay-drenched synth blips the jam is itself a dynamic give and take. to me it functions like i want you (she's so heavy) on abbey road. it is the same template of funky verse sections combined with a threatening chorus build. and repeated again and again and only getting more and more...heavy. and yet L'Via has that section reserved for rhythmic pounding while omar wails away above it all. heaviosity to the MAX! no bad vibes here, just tasty-most on the groove-scale.
so to further solidify my volta relationship i had the awesome fortune of seeing them that summer as well. i saw them at bonaroo and they took the stage about an hour late, lost power in the first song, and played for a little over half an hour. and i loved it again. here the apologist thing starts to rear its ugly head. this time around i was mis-treated and it was like they knew they could. because those were the most badass minutes of my summer.
i took some mushrooms before that show and entered the fray this time like a collegiate shaman trying to force a little spirituality the only way he knows how. well guess what, it totally worked and i was writhing and stomping around with a mass of other freaky babies. and they played L'Via and i really threw my frame around for that one i can tell you. many a college student and way-too-drunk middle aged dude had their faces melted in the presence of the mars volta that evening i can tell you. when i found aidan after the set (its funny i lost track of sanborn at the first show...i unconsciously isolate myself to commune more directly with the volta?) we just stumbled around in the rain laughing. maybe that was the drugs but i like to think that the rock played a significant part.
and here my voltage was recharged and i had seen the light, again. i bought a damn t-shirt!
so now there is amputechture and as i listen to it again and again and like it more each time and have trouble sitting still and want to tell everybody that i know i am also now finally aware of the peculiar relationship i have developed to this band. i am finally a full on mars volta apologist.
as i write this i go back through my catalogue of volta and with each piece i think its my favorite. that guitar and organ interplay at the end of eunuch provocateur is like an electric web of a badass spider. a spider that plays guitar with two arms and organ with two and spins electric barbed wire while a tasty, but deadly, venom drips from its stained-glass fangs! the little muted bursts in drunkship of laterns are small, almost unnoticed and yet add another level of sizzle. i mean i could just go on and on and it would get geekier (like doesn't the riff from Cygnus appear in the live rendition of drunkship from the live EP?)
what i'm trying to say is that i make distinctions like with the beatles or with elvis costello; i make a call about what i like the most but basically everything rocks in its way and has a solid place.
amputechture is an improvement on the extended jams of frances the mute. songs are comprised of a number of hard rocking movements. asilos magdalena is volta ballad like televators or the widow or miranda that ghost just isn't holy anymore (a personal favorite in terms of title)
day of the baphomets and tetragrammaton heap shreddy riffs on leading to the belief that omar has these to spare. its reminiscent of the endings of songs on evil empire where tom morello seemed to have an endless supply of funky hard rock at his blessed fingertips. viscera eyes redeploys the sinister funk of L'Via with soaring guitar and horn section. deft, metal runs threaten to shred speakers and then it segues to an extended outro with...more mind-blowing guit-piece and a regrouped cedric. finally the outro builds back up to equal intensity as horns and wah-ed guitar fatten the track.
funky, jammy volta is like rage playing four square with bitches brew, and the saxophone solo at the end of the stooges' 1970, and the horns and guitars of trout mask replica. and also its more. its its own thang and its somethin else.
it is music that after seeing live i am hopelessly devoted to and yet i do not make the distinction that it needs the live setting. the records smoke quite enough on their own. certainly there are elements of technical appreciation/amazement. but cannot anyone develop an appreciation for uncompromising, non-stop rocking? i have to think so, its something that gives me hope.
essentially the more i listen to it the very elements that would alienate my respected peers are what make the music so vibrant and necessary to me. i am an unapologetic apologist and when the new album drops and others hear it i cannot wait for people i know to say again "its cool but i dont know, it just goes on forever and i can't sit down and listen to that" oh, i think you can. i think you should.
its not over til the tremulant sings!
-vw
and now i shall tackle what i feel to be my first serious use of this blog. in case it is not clear, i take my rock music pretty serious and the mars volta is a prime example. my relationship to the volta is long and storied. in the melancholy wake of at the drive-in i came across some early demo songs by the sci-fi sinister sounding new project on the internets. one would end up on the tremulant ep as concertina, in essentially the same form. one really blew me away. i downloaded it as eat the sun. it is basically a streamlined, stripped-down version of what appeared as Cicatriz ESP on the debut album. i was hooked and anxiously awaiting full-length output by the crazy elements of atdi. there were unmistakable drive-in elements in cedric's screech and vaguely threatening lyrical content. omar (yeah i call them both by first names only anymore) could still expertly employ the stutter-thrash, bizarre voice chorus rock outs. but they were (excuse the rock cliche) stretching out on these tracks.
let me state for the record (should i be brought before rock authenticity court, the ghost of lester bangs presiding...bailiff - little ghost) that relationship of command is really one of the greatest rock albums of my days and i believe it will only gain in stature. the album is screaming immediacy and gut-punch impact. and its whack as hell. it sounds so much more vital and honest than any rock i have heard since. i even think i believe that. i was talking with my good friend dave frank about intially viewing the one armed scissor video and i think it serves as a good example of how atdi came across. somewhere in deep, not too hip texas some crazy punks formed into a visceral onslought of raw power. the end result (and relationship of command is really where they hit the mark with blistering consistancy) is a brutal and bewildering experience. something like watching the MC5 stomp the shit out of emo in the parking lot of a dingy truck-stop. so for the record i dont think that the mars volta have yet created anything so timeless as relationship of command but to me thats kind of like saying that the plastic ono band wasn't as good as abbey road.
so back to the voltage, i finished my first year of college pretty psyched for the forthcoming De-Loused in the Comatorium. some friends had it and complained of rick rubin's over-production. i picked the cd up at bullmoose and complained of the retarded cover art. either way you put those liner notes in it looks like an unpromising, sci-fi, adventure novel. even in my growing fanaticism i cannot bring myself to forgive them this thoughtless offense.
upon listening to the album the vocal effects and rubin virtual arena were a bit offputting. i mean it was basically hard for us (friends and i) to not hear relationship of command. with time though the rock would not be denied and i warmed to this. certainly more so than to the watery, unremarkable Sparta.
a little uncertainly i purchased a ticket to see the volta at the axis in boston. the ticket was cheap and the album was pretty cool and what i knew of the onstage antics of cedric and omar...well it'd probably be cool. i was in no way prepared for what happened that night in july of 2003.
a band called rye coalition opened and pretty much sucked. as i have said before this really only aides a show though i can think of precious few who could have set the bar too high for what followed. in the darkness the volta began Son et Lumiere. the crowd was packed in, sweating profusely and clenching fists and biting tongues in agonizing anticipation of the noise about to explode from the tinkling keyboard line. if you've never been to the axis it is the tiny neighbor to the kind of stupid avalon. what will always be to me the unassuming alternative that rocks much harder. it will always be the site of what was a near religious experience of rock and roll music.
Inertiatic ESP opened up and electrified the crowd. if this music sounded jarring on record it was damn near about to break apart live. everyone, crowd included, seemed to be doing all they could to keep up with the demon-possesed groove. drum fills skittered in and out of propulsive bass and the slashes and stabs of guitar. then they got to the keyboard break and could we jump and squirm quick enough to provide the reciprocal energy to keep this thing alive? well fuck yes actually we could. ikey owens pressed his keyboard into the stage and the band bashed onward in their place. and then it was relieved. the tightly wound, expertly crafted, anxiety we had all been enmeshed in gave way to languid guitar and an approximate croon from cedric. just enough to lull us unprepared right into the crackling assault of roulette dares. and yes they proceeded to play de-loused from start to finish.
i feel a certain strange kinship to phish fans who say you can't understand the music until you've experienced it in the live setting after seeing this show. i was a fan of the mars volta for sure but seeing the live show transcended popular rock for me and what was an affinity became an obsession. as i stumbled from the axis that night, without the aid of any substances, i was somewhere between giddy and wiped out and if the metaphor isn't yet clear enough let me go the full length of it to say the experience was orgasmic. it was a physical, aesthetic engagment and i wanted it to happen again. where the record indulges in extended ambient sections that all but end songs (well cicatriz ESP specifically) the live volta let omar rodriguez-lopez shred unfettered. long, twisting-whack guitar solos filled this space and gave space-rock and prog-metal a new and large place in my heart. but the volta doesn't like these categories and a fan-boy such as i will give them their full due.
in point of fact no categories seem entirely fair, and really don't for any good rock act. when it is good something inexplicable and complex occurs which will not be neatly summed up. this was the most bashing-abrasive punk rock i'd ever been bludgeoned with and it was the most ethereal psychedelia and just when it made you comfortable to jam on one it would hit ya with the other. thats not even mentioning machine-like precise metal solos and hard-core rumbling drums and soulful organ workouts. it was too quick and bizarre and i loved every minute of it.
and so began a zealotous phase wherein i told everyone i knew who liked to rock that they NEEDED to see the mars volta live. i probably told a lot of people who were totally unreceptive too. (my mother made fun of me the other day for sitting in front of the computer with amputechture crying out in ecstasy, "this is soooooo good, i'm so pumped about this new mars volta album, i'm so glad i found it")
and the summer plodded on in a haze of boring work days, brilliant beach days, and i fear a great deal of marijuana smoke. and lots of other music. rjd2 and air and boom-bip and built to spill. and fall brought the distorted reality 7" and soon after the death of elliott smith and i was distracted by a million other things. there are of course a million other potential essays of equal self-indulgent length and melodramatic rock proselytizing here but...for another day.
so fast forward to the spring of my junior year, 2005 when my good friend neal daniel sends me an electronic copy of the forthcoming Frances the Mute. i had gone many moons without rocking any voltage but my dormant obsession was not entirely depleated. as anyone who, with age, finds more and more to love in short, well-crafted pop music (elliott leads to zombies and to pet sounds...etc) i was wary of tracks that had no regard for the 3 minute rule, or the 10 minute rule for that matter. maybe the guys have gone all jazz record on us i thought and readied my ears and brain.
structurally this may be jazzy but the album opener, Cygnus...Vismond Cygnus, sounds only tangentially jazzy, like maybe the ghost of Ornette Coleman wailing through about a dozen Marshall stacks. (i know ornette's still alive but, c'mon...nothin wails like a ghost) in short i was totally sold. the thrash riff opener acknowledged the hard rocking of de-loused and did it one better. it was like the blazing culmination of tremulant's eunuch provocateur, but setting the tone for the entire album. it was like if ian mckaye gave up on straight-edge and snorted up a shit load of blow, gobbled some mushrooms and while staring into the gaping maw of a giant tarantula (in his mind) began to rock a guit-piece. dare i say it was akin to putting nevermind into my walkman and for the first time being bowled over by the clean intro which gave way to distorted monster guitar and ass-kicking drum counts of smells like teen spirit. yeah, it was a little like that.
but the volta had really amped up on Frances and almost too much in terms of listening through. even more than de-loused this album bled all together and left little time to catch one's breath or recover. the opener starts out heavy and only moves through extended suites of heavy riffing/screeching and stuttering rhythms...crazy rhythms. by the time the widow rolls around one has been treated to more balls-out rocking than some entire albums ever achieve. and when i hear this tune i can't really sit still so i'm pretty exhausted after 13 minutes.
recently in discussion of the mars volta i have come to feel ostracized in the manner of a religious zealot. rather than arguing what i think are salient points people back out, kind of uncomfortable in the face of my fanatical insistence that the band rocks and in fact only gets better. though it is a very tough call i still hold the evidently unpopular belief that Frances the Mute was an improvement on the template of De-Loused in the Comatorium. and mostly i guess i think that because of L'Via L'Viaquez which may very well be the best recorded mars volta to date.
track three begins with a blaring funky strut that cedric shrieks over. upon first listen i was vaguley worried about how good this danceable mars volta would be. but they pull it off expertly with the funky strumming building into nightmare rock only to relapse into a simmering piano-driven shuffle. and back and forth and repeat. and i cannot grow tired of this. it is the same building tension and release of de-loused but more subtle here, instead of false endings or delay-drenched synth blips the jam is itself a dynamic give and take. to me it functions like i want you (she's so heavy) on abbey road. it is the same template of funky verse sections combined with a threatening chorus build. and repeated again and again and only getting more and more...heavy. and yet L'Via has that section reserved for rhythmic pounding while omar wails away above it all. heaviosity to the MAX! no bad vibes here, just tasty-most on the groove-scale.
so to further solidify my volta relationship i had the awesome fortune of seeing them that summer as well. i saw them at bonaroo and they took the stage about an hour late, lost power in the first song, and played for a little over half an hour. and i loved it again. here the apologist thing starts to rear its ugly head. this time around i was mis-treated and it was like they knew they could. because those were the most badass minutes of my summer.
i took some mushrooms before that show and entered the fray this time like a collegiate shaman trying to force a little spirituality the only way he knows how. well guess what, it totally worked and i was writhing and stomping around with a mass of other freaky babies. and they played L'Via and i really threw my frame around for that one i can tell you. many a college student and way-too-drunk middle aged dude had their faces melted in the presence of the mars volta that evening i can tell you. when i found aidan after the set (its funny i lost track of sanborn at the first show...i unconsciously isolate myself to commune more directly with the volta?) we just stumbled around in the rain laughing. maybe that was the drugs but i like to think that the rock played a significant part.
and here my voltage was recharged and i had seen the light, again. i bought a damn t-shirt!
so now there is amputechture and as i listen to it again and again and like it more each time and have trouble sitting still and want to tell everybody that i know i am also now finally aware of the peculiar relationship i have developed to this band. i am finally a full on mars volta apologist.
as i write this i go back through my catalogue of volta and with each piece i think its my favorite. that guitar and organ interplay at the end of eunuch provocateur is like an electric web of a badass spider. a spider that plays guitar with two arms and organ with two and spins electric barbed wire while a tasty, but deadly, venom drips from its stained-glass fangs! the little muted bursts in drunkship of laterns are small, almost unnoticed and yet add another level of sizzle. i mean i could just go on and on and it would get geekier (like doesn't the riff from Cygnus appear in the live rendition of drunkship from the live EP?)
what i'm trying to say is that i make distinctions like with the beatles or with elvis costello; i make a call about what i like the most but basically everything rocks in its way and has a solid place.
amputechture is an improvement on the extended jams of frances the mute. songs are comprised of a number of hard rocking movements. asilos magdalena is volta ballad like televators or the widow or miranda that ghost just isn't holy anymore (a personal favorite in terms of title)
day of the baphomets and tetragrammaton heap shreddy riffs on leading to the belief that omar has these to spare. its reminiscent of the endings of songs on evil empire where tom morello seemed to have an endless supply of funky hard rock at his blessed fingertips. viscera eyes redeploys the sinister funk of L'Via with soaring guitar and horn section. deft, metal runs threaten to shred speakers and then it segues to an extended outro with...more mind-blowing guit-piece and a regrouped cedric. finally the outro builds back up to equal intensity as horns and wah-ed guitar fatten the track.
funky, jammy volta is like rage playing four square with bitches brew, and the saxophone solo at the end of the stooges' 1970, and the horns and guitars of trout mask replica. and also its more. its its own thang and its somethin else.
it is music that after seeing live i am hopelessly devoted to and yet i do not make the distinction that it needs the live setting. the records smoke quite enough on their own. certainly there are elements of technical appreciation/amazement. but cannot anyone develop an appreciation for uncompromising, non-stop rocking? i have to think so, its something that gives me hope.
essentially the more i listen to it the very elements that would alienate my respected peers are what make the music so vibrant and necessary to me. i am an unapologetic apologist and when the new album drops and others hear it i cannot wait for people i know to say again "its cool but i dont know, it just goes on forever and i can't sit down and listen to that" oh, i think you can. i think you should.
its not over til the tremulant sings!
-vw
posted by vw at 10:38 AM
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