The third studio album in five years from LA-based Mexican art-rockers The Mars Volta - essentially the creative partnership between composer/guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and lyricist/vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala – is the polar opposite of easy listening.
Recorded in LA, El Paso and Melbourne, it sounds appropriately all over the place – alternatively hard/fast, soft/slow, loud/quiet, good/great, shit/shite, English/Spanish (and often all these things within the same 60 seconds). Which isn’t necessarily to say that it’s no good, but it certainly won’t be to everybody’s taste. Think Jane’s Addiction having a serious relapse, and that still doesn’t quite nail it.
Cedric recently described it as the musical equivalent of director David Lynch’s bizarre early ‘90’s TV series Twin Peaks. It’s an apt enough comparison. Unpredictable as jazz, Amputechture is weird, wild and doesn’t even sound as if it knows where it’s going itself. Lyrically, it’s impossible to decipher (song titles like ‘Meccamputechture’ and ‘Tetragrammaton’?). Musically, it’s a free-styling mess; lots of great moments, but no real memorable melodies or hooks.
Seven other musicians contributed to this record, the most famous of them being the Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante (who plays on all eight tracks) and it may well be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
I didn’t particularly enjoy Amputechture, and it’ll be a relief to put it away. To my delicate ears, it all sounds a touch over-indulgent, and demands far more attention than it deserves. However, that’s just a personal opinion and it would be unjust of me to totally write it off. There may well be some good art going on here, but it’s so buried and blurred in the mix that it’s hard to immediately discern.
Download a track from their MySpace site first.