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02. The Mars Volta - De-Loused In The Comatorium

Maybe it's not quite safe to say that the great prog-rock revival has begun - maybe it never will, but you can't tell that to bands like the Mars Volta. For the one-hour length of De-Loused In The Comatorium, the Mars Volta spin a complex, mind-boggling web of confusion, songs bleed into one another as motifs are resurrected and mutated, accompanied by odd time-signatures, squealing vocals and dramatic turns of phrase - and not one bit of it makes even the slightest sense. Take some lyrics from "Drunkship of Lanterns," for example:

Rowing sheep smile for the dead
Transoceanic depth in this earth

Your guess is as good as mine. The music's like this too. It winds and twists, breaks down, builds back up, all at a frantic pace. It sounds like simply too too much, but it's intoxicating - once you free up any need to make sense of what you're hearing, you become hooked. Like the best progressive rock, the Mars Volta paints a picture, never giving in to the tendency to show off - no big solos, no needlessly complex passages. The Mars Volta makes music like M.C. Escher drew - doing things that seem impossible to imagine, and when you confront it you can't believe someone actually thought this stuff up. This is the closest thing to a modern day Lamb Lies Down On Broadway as we're likely to get - it's that good.

03. Calexico - Feast Of Wire

They may have a dedicated following, and they've got the "big in Europe" branding, but I still don't understand how Calexico goes almost totally unnoticed in America. This is a band whose sound reflects their roots - being from Tucson, AZ, you'd almost expect that something very "southwestern" should emerge - and yet sounds entirely worldly. There's not a whiff of that "local band" stink to them. Calexico looked beyond the "college bar band" stigma most local acts never get out from under (being from Arizona, I must toss up Tempe's Gin Blossoms as a prime example) and found a world looking for Sonoran music that didn't sound like a bunch of ranch-hands sitting around bemoaning their woes of their life. Mixing laid-back rock with south-of-the-border horns, instead of making yet another depressing slab of alt.-country, Calexico craft a kind of film-noir atmosphere just begging to be exploited on the silver screen. This is the music of dusty, wind-blown towns, of modern day life in the desert in aging homes and desperate, bored people. The thing is, the music isn't in the slightest boring - it's rivetting and beautiful, a desolate, spare sound that makes one yearn for a more simple life.

Article Author: Tom Johnson

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