the Mars Volta + At the Drive-in

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AFX
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the Mars Volta + At the Drive-in

Post by AFX » 30 Jun 2009 09:09

prima o poi toccava aprirlo


pitchfork che li ha sempre disgustati mette un 6 al loro ultimo sforzo Octahedron, l'album meno marsvoltiano del lotto finora. Più o meno sono d'accordo, certo meglio delle ultime croste
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Look, here's the deal: If you don't know what you're getting into with a new Mars Volta record at this point, after seven years and five albums (plus one EP and a live thing or two), then my advice is to go directly to full-length numero uno, 2003's De-Loused in the Comatorium. Sample its rhythmic-centric, post-emo art-rock, and decide if you need to continue through the band's catalog. It only gets less user-friendly from there.

Because (speaking to the first-time listeners) "rhythm-centric" here doesn't mean anything remotely funky. It means the frantic, percussion-heavy, multiple-tempo-shifts-per-song brand of complexity inaugurated by batshit 70s-era theatrical hard rock. Also, the band's allegiance to jazz-fusion titans, ones not averse to fuzz and a low-end, means things get far...looser from album number two onward. Arena-grade heavy metal thunder abruptly melts into a groovily aimless journey for congas and electric organ. Repeatedly. Immodestly virtuosic and never afraid to run with a jam, the Mars Volta's ability to alienate newcomers is well-documented. Which means this review is probably for those not already-- or instantly, after their first listen-- alienated.

Is Octahedron the band's best album? No, but if you dig on MV's unrepentantly "big" and meandering suite-driven concept-album thing, you won't necessarily be disappointed. And with songs that only once stray past the eight-minute mark, it's the most accessible MV album since the first. Slower, with fewer breakdowns or out-of-nowhere segues into a wholly new song, it's kind of a Cliffs Notes of everything the band does well, ditching much of the attention-straining stuff. For instance, the hallucinogen-friendly stretches, where glassily effected guitars ping and peal at lava-lamp tempo, have been pruned. (Okay, with a few exceptions.) Even the longest songs stick to something like a coherent mood and linear structure.

Sometimes they even straight-up rock. "Cotopaxi" is perhaps the tersest, most jagged song Omar Rodriguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have cut since At the Drive-In imploded, a boogie riff nodding to their Texan origins, violently cut up and reassembled with virtuoso care. "Desperate Graves" actually builds, rather than dropping a big loud bomb after a placid bit of introductory strumming, and comes with the closest thing the band's written to an instantly memorable chorus in quite a while. Even the breakdown is short and to the point.

This being the Mars Volta, however, it wouldn't do for the album to be entirely curveball-free. For instance, Autechre-style electronic hisses and bristling beats bubble up in the latter half off "Copernicus", mostly without getting all show-offy about it. There's also the general slow and steady downtempo-- or plain downer-- feel to many of the songs. For a band so often pilloried for being too agitated to ride out a good riff, it's probably the closest the Mars Volta will ever come to a cop for the slow jam kids. And it's hard to deny that, depending on your taste for jamming, if you've ever dug on acid-spitting wank-solos over endless, thunderous drum rolls, the final minutes of album closer "Luciforms" is pretty much the shit from a shameless climax standpoint.

As for Rodriguez-López' lyrics, well, sure, they still often verge on the eye-rolling if you're not going to meet him halfway. I'm not going to pretend that a line like, "My devil makes me dream/ Like no other mortal dreams" comes off to me as anything but camp/kitsch. And "don't stop dragging the lake" (from "Cotopaxi") isn't really an earworm as far as hooks go. Now I don't mean to dismiss the words' possible import. It's been clear from album one that the lyrics have a deep resonance for the band, and are meant as clues for the kind of fanbase who enjoys treating records as narratives with big gaps waiting to be filled with a little online research/interview legwork/guesswork. While I'm so not that guy, I will just say the melodrama-rich, scrambled poetry-notebook puzzle pieces do "work" in the context of the album's overall sound. So does the Hammer horror flick sound of Rodriguez-López's tortured-castrato vocals. When his full-tilt shriek joins the band at a moment of total commotion, you can easily imagine the planetarium-scale mock grandeur of it all.

The Mars Volta feeds some very specific needs in its fanbase. There's a certain kind of listener that, maybe once a year or maybe every day, wants music that sates the same impulse that makes people gorge on spectacle-scale cinema or devour the entire Dune series in a few weeks. The Mars Volta's specific brand of bombast may remain an untranslatable language for those rooted in a DIY-scaled world, or committed to the shiny three-minutes-and-change tidiness of the charts. But if you're fiending for the musical equivalent of an epic, partially incoherent battle between good and evil in IMAX 3D, you could do a lot worse.
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Shaun
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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by Shaun » 30 Jun 2009 10:00

Io torno ogni tanto a Tremulant, Deloused in the Comatorium e Frances the Mute. Gli unici che ho anche originali, fra l'altro. Il resto mi schifa, anche il Golia che in un primo tempo qualcosa di buono mi era parso avere oggi lo reputo una schifezza.

Erano fra i miei ascolti preferiti qualche anno fa.
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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by :adamasio: » 30 Jun 2009 10:24

L'ultimo non l'ho nemmeno ascoltato, perchè di dischi da 6 non me ne faccio molto.
Io amo Deloused.. e parecchio: quello sì che me lo ascolto, non spesso ma ogni tanto si!

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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by Ocean Of Noise » 30 Jun 2009 17:05

Ho amato daverro tanto Deloused. Adesso mi è difficile tornarci sopra, ma è l'unico che di loro mi piaccia praticamente tutto. Gli altri in particolar modo gli ultimi sono pacchiani in maniera assurda, quasi in modo impossibile.

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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by Mr.CannotRemember » 30 Jun 2009 18:36

Deloused in the Comatorium e Frances the Mute, il primo mi piace parecchio, sì, ed era uno dei miei album preferiti. Ora invece ci ritorno meno spesso, ma, quando ho bisogno di un pò di musica contorta, le belle sensazioni si sentono ancora.

Ah, io (fortunatamente?) non ho mai sentito Amputechture, The Bedlam in Goliath e l'ultimo Octahedron. Ci provo o risparmio tempo?

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Decades
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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by Decades » 30 Jun 2009 18:39

Lascia stare, mantieni un buon ricordo. Fidati, quello che è venuto dopo Frances è tutto trascurabile al 100% e anche di più. Piuttosto se ti piace il primo cerca Tremulant.
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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by reese » 30 Jun 2009 19:07

Io invece ritengo The Bedlam In Goliath un album carino, con pezzi orecchiabili; insomma, con una svolta decisamente verso una forma più abituale, ma non per questo da trascurare. Per apprezzarlo un minimo, si deve partire assolutamente non prevenuti, altrimenti è un ascolto inutile, dato che non è sconvolgente di per sé.

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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by Sobieskiego 7/6 » 30 Jun 2009 20:02

e degli at the drive in cosa dite? a me è proprio il modo di cantare che non piace: urla, gridolini, acuti allucinanti, falsetti, alvin... ma il piacere d'ascolto? :lol:
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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by Von » 30 Jun 2009 20:29

Sobieskiego 7/6 wrote:e degli at the drive in cosa dite?
Per anni ho provato a digerire Relationship of command ma giuro che, con tutto l'impegno di questo mondo, non riesco a trovarci nulla di interessante. Né i suoni, né i pezzi, né lui che canta proprio male secondo me, stonando clamorosamente in più punti.
No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

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Dry
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Re: the Mars Volta

Post by Dry » 30 Jun 2009 22:41

a me son sempre stati sulle scatole
vorrei anche mettere un commento più sensato ma dovrei proprio sforzarmi. Degli ultimi ho ascoltato poco niente, giusto quel paio di pezzi che giravano, il fatto è che io non li ho mai capiti nemmeno prima e sinceramente manco gli at the drive in mi erano poi così simpatici, il fatto è che più passa il tempo meno mi viene lo stimolo a riprovarci e ci vorrebbe una vera e propria opera di convincimento per farmi cedere. Disgustorama.
Ci aveva pensato..

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