FRANCES THE MUTE

This is The Mars Volta's full second outing. Most of those who don't think De-loused is their masterpiece will often cite this one as being the ultimate TMV album, or many of the rest will say it's at least really close in quality to the debut. I happen to agree with the second group however. Instead of this being a collection of multiple songs, the band instead put together a collection of 4 extended epics and one song in The Widow. This album has been reviewed so many times like their debut, so I'll try to keep it short.

Again, this is music that focuses on rocking out really hard with extended jams and weird noises throughout. Although this album makes me think that it's TMV's jam album. In some ways this is good, but in others it's not. Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus and L'via L'viaquez are two of my favorite TMV songs and if the whole album was like both of those songs, then this would easily be a 5 star album. However, two songs prevent this from happening for me: the last two. Miranda could really have had the last quarter or so of the song trimmed and Cassandra could very well have had the second of the song chopped off completely. This extended jamming works well live from what I've heard, but I'd prefer to hear it there instead of on a studio album. Come to think of it, the major flaw of this album is the extended jamming. It was only in small quantities on the debut, but here it comes in large chunks on nearly every song except the short The Widow. However, there's enough present here that makes this album more than worthwhile. But while TMV's debut is something like 4.5 stars for me, this is more like an even 4. The band would really begin to pick up some steam on their next two releases however.