When I think of The Mars Volta, these two words more often than not are the first to pop into my head: damn weird. If you have ever listened to them, you know what I mean. This post is motivated through that fact and also the fact that apparently guitarist Omar Rodriguez thought the sixth studio album that the band was working to be, and I quote, "too boring, and put on hold in favor of writing some new material. Now, seeing how completely strange The Mars Volta and the music that they make are, what might the bands definition of boring be?
Looking through the bands discography, as time goes on they are certainly gaining a more accessible sound. Frances the Mute and Amputechture are so strange, so completely out there I can't even bear to listen to them. I do have plays of both in my Last.fm library, yes, but that doesn't mean that listening to those album was in any way a pleasant experience. When I think about it, it seems to me that it is the absolute chaos, the absolute lack of any sort of structure that really turns me off. One example of this that is especially striking to me are some, if not most, of the saxophone parts found in Amputechture. When I listen to them I think "Its completely random! How the hell do they reproduce that on stage?". When it comes down to it, those albums, having very little musical value to me, strike me as just noise.
That is different with The Bedlam in Goliath. They certainly remain incredibly weird in that album, but I find that I can actually listen to it and enjoy it. This is certainly a major change over their previous albums. The trend somewhat continues in Octahedron, but seeing it's somewhat subdued nature, I never quite have been able to get into. Perhaps with this trend I can understand Rodriguez finding some the material they've been working on as boring.
No comments:
Post a Comment