Frances the Mute is the second studio album by American experimental progressive rock band, The Mars Volta. A fun fact about this band: the "Volta" in the band's name comes from a term in a book by Federico Fellini, which he defines to mean "a changing of scene, or a turnaround". The "Mars" part of the name just came from the band's fascination with science fiction. What does these two words mean together? Who knows. The Mars Volta stands out to me as a band due to the unusually loud, chaotic, and powerful nature of their music. Progressive music is often chaotic, but The Mars Volta takes it to a whole new level. You will be listening to one of their songs, and suddenly BAM! Cement truck of guitars and synths to the face! In addition, the amazing and unique vocals of Cedric Bixler-Zavala bring a lot to the band's music. His voice is extremely powerful and is able to quickly and flawlessly switch between standard rock vocals to soaring heights to Latin fusion to Björk esque singing to emotional whines. This lends itself well to chaotic nature of their music, letting the vocals change and evolve just as fast as the instrumental melodies.
In addition to being their second studio album, Frances the Mute is also the band's second concept album. The album is based off of a diary the band's sound technician at the time, Jeremy Ward, found in a car while working as a repo man. While reading the diary, Ward noticed similarities between the author's life and his own, notably that they were both adopted. It documented the author's search for his biological parents, and had a list of names of people who could potentially be them. These names were used as the basis for the names of every track on the album.
This album starts off with a banger: "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus". This song throws the listener straight into the chaos by introducing the albums concept and backing it up with a fast, surprising jolt of music. This song introduces us to the protagonist of this story, Vismund Cygnus, a man who was adopted and was the product of a rape and failed abortion. We join him on his quest to find his biological parents and learn about the circumstances of his birth. He has a list of names to help him in this search. The song starts off slow, and then slams you with a fast paced and technical rock wall which continues throughout the song. Every once in a while, a Latin sounding riff or some Spanish lyrics are thrown in to mix it up. The music works really well with the lyrics by making the listener feel the stress and uncertainty that Cygnus is feeling when thinking about the circumstances of his birth.
The next song on the album, "The Widow," is a much slower song, and the only single of the band's career to chart in the Billboard Hot 100, finishing at #95. This song is dedicated to, and about Jeremy Ward, the technician who found the diary. Jeremy died of a heroin overdose two years before this album was released, and the lyrics of this song are from the perspective of someone who is watching Jeremy slowly kill himself with drugs. It talks about how they like being around him despite his drug abuse, and how much they'll miss him when he dies from it. The song is very slow and beautiful, with haunting vocals over wining guitars. During the chorus, loud pained guitars blast through, and the vocals soar to mournful heights. It gives me shivers every time I listen to it. Also, Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers plays a trumpet on this song, which is pretty cool.
The Mars Volta is a band which likes to incorporate Latin fusion into a lot of their music, and there isn't anywhere on this album that this is more apparent then on "L'Via L'Viauez." This song is almost entirely Latin fusion, and most of the lyrics are in Spanish. Lucky for you guys, I translated them, and can tell you what this song is about. In this song we get back to the main plot, and Cygnus is telling us a story about his aunt, L'Via, who is on the run, hiding from the church, after she witnessed the priests killing Frances, Cygnus's mother (yes, Frances the Mute is Cygnus's mother). L'Via changed her last name to Viaquez to help prevent the church from finding her. The song uses a Mexican sounding, hard rock melody with some progressive hooks mixed in to keep things interesting. Even without understanding the lyrics you can feel the emotions in this song: fear, urgency, and sadness.
The next song, "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore," is about Miranda, Cygnus's grandmother. Miranda was infuriated and horrified by the actions of the church, and the murder of her daughter. Instead of running and hiding like L'Via, Miranda fought the church tooth and nail, earning great respect from Cygnus. She did her best to expose the horrors of the church to the public, but they all either didn't care, or were too scared to do anything about it. This is another slow song, full of echoey guitars and sad singing. The song also starts with a weird, creepy, and almost disturbing instrumental that really sets the stage for the rest of the song.
The final, and longest song on the album is "Cassandra Gemini". This beast is 32 minutes long and finally gives us the whole story behind Cygnus's birth. Frances told L'Via about sexual advances and threats from a priest, but L'Via didn't believe her. The priest raped Frances and got her pregnant. In an effort to prevent people from finding out, the priest killed her with an ice pick while she was very late in her pregnancy. Somehow, Cygnus survived and was saved by an unknown person. They placed him in an orphanage where he could live in ignorance of the murder, and away from the church. This hadn't been the first time the priest had done this, and he has multiple illegitimate sons. The other clergymen were aware of the priest's exploits and would do what they could to snuff out any knowledge of the misdeeds of the priest. They did this through any means necessary, including murder. After learning of this, Cygnus feels like it has been his destiny to get revenge for his mother's murder this whole time. He views religion as a disease among society and hates the clergymen with passion. He hunts down each of the clergymen and kills them, just like they did to his mother. Afterwards, Cygnus realizes he is now a murder, and just as bad as the clergymen themselves. Cygnus returns home and realizes he has spent his entire life searching for his mother, who was dead the whole time. His life has just been a lie, and now he has learned the truth and is returning home with nothing. This song its self varies a lot in sound. It starts fast and chaotic, but slows down and becomes more psychedelic and experimental towards the middle. This song also has a lot of jazz elements, more so than the other songs on this album. A common progressive rock thing is to have a really long song on your album with multiple parts, called a progressive suite. This album actually has 3 suites, "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus," "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore," and "Cassandra Gemini". Suites are used to serve two main purposes: to help make the album's story flow more smoothly, and to allow the band to diddle around on their instruments for a while without it seeming out of place (prog bands sure do love diddling around on their instruments). This song serves both purposes very well. It does a good job wrapping up the story, and allows for several minutes of instrument diddling.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story and music on this album. Listening to it was like a breath of fresh air because of how unique it is. Most progressive rock borrows heavily from the prog greats of the 70s like Yes and Genesis, but The Mars Volta does not. Sure, they obviously are influenced by those bands, but they take it in a whole new direction, making it seem new and exciting.
Rating: 9/10
In addition to being their second studio album, Frances the Mute is also the band's second concept album. The album is based off of a diary the band's sound technician at the time, Jeremy Ward, found in a car while working as a repo man. While reading the diary, Ward noticed similarities between the author's life and his own, notably that they were both adopted. It documented the author's search for his biological parents, and had a list of names of people who could potentially be them. These names were used as the basis for the names of every track on the album.
This album starts off with a banger: "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus". This song throws the listener straight into the chaos by introducing the albums concept and backing it up with a fast, surprising jolt of music. This song introduces us to the protagonist of this story, Vismund Cygnus, a man who was adopted and was the product of a rape and failed abortion. We join him on his quest to find his biological parents and learn about the circumstances of his birth. He has a list of names to help him in this search. The song starts off slow, and then slams you with a fast paced and technical rock wall which continues throughout the song. Every once in a while, a Latin sounding riff or some Spanish lyrics are thrown in to mix it up. The music works really well with the lyrics by making the listener feel the stress and uncertainty that Cygnus is feeling when thinking about the circumstances of his birth.
The next song on the album, "The Widow," is a much slower song, and the only single of the band's career to chart in the Billboard Hot 100, finishing at #95. This song is dedicated to, and about Jeremy Ward, the technician who found the diary. Jeremy died of a heroin overdose two years before this album was released, and the lyrics of this song are from the perspective of someone who is watching Jeremy slowly kill himself with drugs. It talks about how they like being around him despite his drug abuse, and how much they'll miss him when he dies from it. The song is very slow and beautiful, with haunting vocals over wining guitars. During the chorus, loud pained guitars blast through, and the vocals soar to mournful heights. It gives me shivers every time I listen to it. Also, Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers plays a trumpet on this song, which is pretty cool.
The Mars Volta is a band which likes to incorporate Latin fusion into a lot of their music, and there isn't anywhere on this album that this is more apparent then on "L'Via L'Viauez." This song is almost entirely Latin fusion, and most of the lyrics are in Spanish. Lucky for you guys, I translated them, and can tell you what this song is about. In this song we get back to the main plot, and Cygnus is telling us a story about his aunt, L'Via, who is on the run, hiding from the church, after she witnessed the priests killing Frances, Cygnus's mother (yes, Frances the Mute is Cygnus's mother). L'Via changed her last name to Viaquez to help prevent the church from finding her. The song uses a Mexican sounding, hard rock melody with some progressive hooks mixed in to keep things interesting. Even without understanding the lyrics you can feel the emotions in this song: fear, urgency, and sadness.
The next song, "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore," is about Miranda, Cygnus's grandmother. Miranda was infuriated and horrified by the actions of the church, and the murder of her daughter. Instead of running and hiding like L'Via, Miranda fought the church tooth and nail, earning great respect from Cygnus. She did her best to expose the horrors of the church to the public, but they all either didn't care, or were too scared to do anything about it. This is another slow song, full of echoey guitars and sad singing. The song also starts with a weird, creepy, and almost disturbing instrumental that really sets the stage for the rest of the song.
The final, and longest song on the album is "Cassandra Gemini". This beast is 32 minutes long and finally gives us the whole story behind Cygnus's birth. Frances told L'Via about sexual advances and threats from a priest, but L'Via didn't believe her. The priest raped Frances and got her pregnant. In an effort to prevent people from finding out, the priest killed her with an ice pick while she was very late in her pregnancy. Somehow, Cygnus survived and was saved by an unknown person. They placed him in an orphanage where he could live in ignorance of the murder, and away from the church. This hadn't been the first time the priest had done this, and he has multiple illegitimate sons. The other clergymen were aware of the priest's exploits and would do what they could to snuff out any knowledge of the misdeeds of the priest. They did this through any means necessary, including murder. After learning of this, Cygnus feels like it has been his destiny to get revenge for his mother's murder this whole time. He views religion as a disease among society and hates the clergymen with passion. He hunts down each of the clergymen and kills them, just like they did to his mother. Afterwards, Cygnus realizes he is now a murder, and just as bad as the clergymen themselves. Cygnus returns home and realizes he has spent his entire life searching for his mother, who was dead the whole time. His life has just been a lie, and now he has learned the truth and is returning home with nothing. This song its self varies a lot in sound. It starts fast and chaotic, but slows down and becomes more psychedelic and experimental towards the middle. This song also has a lot of jazz elements, more so than the other songs on this album. A common progressive rock thing is to have a really long song on your album with multiple parts, called a progressive suite. This album actually has 3 suites, "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus," "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore," and "Cassandra Gemini". Suites are used to serve two main purposes: to help make the album's story flow more smoothly, and to allow the band to diddle around on their instruments for a while without it seeming out of place (prog bands sure do love diddling around on their instruments). This song serves both purposes very well. It does a good job wrapping up the story, and allows for several minutes of instrument diddling.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story and music on this album. Listening to it was like a breath of fresh air because of how unique it is. Most progressive rock borrows heavily from the prog greats of the 70s like Yes and Genesis, but The Mars Volta does not. Sure, they obviously are influenced by those bands, but they take it in a whole new direction, making it seem new and exciting.
Rating: 9/10
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