The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute [Green 3LP]

New Vinyl - ReissueGlow-In-The-Dark Green4250795604914 1.Cygnus....Vismund Cygnus Sarcophagi Umbilical Syllables Facilis Descensus Averni Con Safo 2. The Widow3. L'Via L'Viaquez 4. Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore Vade Mecum Pour Another Icepick Pisacis (Phra-Men-Ma) Con Safo 5. Cassandra Gemini Tarantism Plant a Nail in the Navel Stream Faminepulse Multiple Spouse Wounds Sarcophagi If one needed further proof of the contemporary revival/reassessment of the ambitiously overwrought sensibilities once so reviled in '70s rock, this aggressively mindbending second album by the Mars Volta offers it up in spades. Band mainstays Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala insist that labels like "prog" don't interest them, and that this is emphatically not a "sequel" to 2003's De-Loused in the Comatorium. What it is was thematically inspired by a stranger's diary allegedly found by late bandmate Jeremy Ward, the basis for an expansive, often amorphous musical head-trip that brews psychedelia, trance, hard-rock and free-jazz into a daunting new whole. The dozen tracks here represent but five "songs" proper, though the band's disdain for conventional track banding inspire it to sound more like a stream-of-consciousness soundscape from Can—or a dark, lyrically inventive, if decidedly troubled corner of their ids. On the "Umbilical Syllables" portion of "Cygnus.." and "The Widow" Bixler-Zavala invokes the wailing, Led Zeppelin II & III spirit of Robert Plant set against a feverish, swirling melange that's anything but the blues. The vocalist coaxes "L' Via l'Viaquez" en Espanol, while his band indulges its space-mambo conceits with an evocative spirit that recalls Latin Playboys at their most mischievous. It's an album that loops back on itself in a haunting ellipse—and one whose boundless ambition makes Pink Floyd sound like three-chord bar punters by comparison.