Mars Volta – Frances the Mute - by an idiot.

First a scratchy, strummed guitar chord-sequence like a sitar then the gentle- sounding Cedric joins us with his high-pitched voice, moving through notes, following tremolos. The first song then cuts into a fast-paced rock blast with crunchy wah wah guitars. They throw in abrupt pauses before laying back into the beat. “Who do you trust?” is harmonised beautifully before the drums chuck some hard shit at the percussion wall. The song breaks down through a brief musical wash. Now comes a subdued instrumental jazzy workout out with fading guitars sliding up and down a blues scale. Repetitive and hypnotic, the jam becomes hysterical and features the cryptic lyrical image “I can’t remember these lakes of mine,” while majestic strings cut through the piles of electric guitars and mashing drums.

Now comes a screaming and feedback part, sounding like a child singing Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky”. A sample of what could be children on film resonates over a scurry of electronic pulses, throbbing.

And that’s just the first track.

I work in a bar with an MP3 jukebox that demands you pay a pound to play any song that isn’t already on the machine. Now this is bad. The rotation of songs is a random selection of tracks from albums by people as acclaimed as Lemar, George Michael, Kylie, Donna Summer and, you guessed it, The Corrs. Now this wouldn’t be so bad if every song by those people was on here, at least then I would have a random selection and it would be fresh and occasionally amusing in its choice. But I have about 30 songs on random repeat. If I hear Nick Cave and Kylie’s “Murder Ballad: They Call Me the Wild Rose” again, or Joss Stone’s cover of The White Stripes’ “Fell in love with a Girl”, “Fell in Love with a Boy”, I may have to put my hand through the window, just so I’m focusing on something less painful.

I put all tips, loose change and wages into this machine. Long songs (value for money) are revered. The Mars Volta album will be a godsend. The first track is 13 minutes long. It’s intense, it’s amazing. It’s value for fucking money dude. That’s just what you want the customers to hear. You want them thinking about life and death and drugs and love; embracing music of such magnitude and velocity at such high volumes.

Of course, in reality they say "What the hell is this shit? Can you turn it down?” No, I can’t! I mustn’t. It’s important. I work here all day, I need this intellectual stimulation. This philosophical thinking about dreams and drums. You just come in and want to sip a coke and think about boys and donuts. Well, most of you.

Mars Volta’s album, now into a Latin exploration, featuring bongos and piano, continues to develop. Its theme, who Omar a Roderiguez-Lopez (no relation I assume, to Jennifer) so reliably explains is about their late bandmate Jeremy’s personal link with the author of a diary he randomly found in a car. Jeremy died of an overdose just prior to the release of their debut and this album is an exploration of his life.

So it’s fair to say this is a prog-beast of a concept. But The Volta (yeah, what?) are none too chuffed about labels and classifications. But how else do I describe it? It is Pink Floyd kaleidoscopic experimentalist concept and Led Zeppelin big haired rockin’. It is quality. It is satisfying music, rich in ideas and excellently executed,

I think I will spend weeks inside this album.

So to conclude, the cover of the album has a photo taken from the side of a man sitting in the front seat of a car. Over his head and face is a red cloth, leaving him totally anonymous, and we can see the driver of the passing car also has a red cloth over his head, which reflects his feeling of faceless connection to this unknown man whom he shares such similarities in the diary, obviously! Oh, you gotta love it.