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 deadYour 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.
Transoceanic depth in this earth
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 comments
1 - BJ
If you have the energy, I'd love to see a list of your jazz runners up. I've got an itch to pick up some current jazz, but haven't gone out to shop yet.
Re: Rufus - all the women I know still love him. Hell, most of the straight guys I know love him too. He's at the Warfield tonight for all you SF readers out there. Don't know if it's sold out, but I'll be there.
2 - BJ
(And by SF readers I mean San Francisco based readers, not sci-fi readers.)
3 - Mark Saleski
i'm a little shocked to see that i own none of these recordings. i was sure that we'd have some intersecting cds.
i has been a strange year for music...i'm still working on my list(s)