From The Stranger (local free alterna weekly in Seattle.. check
www.thestranger.com ).
THE MARS VOLTA
Amputechture
(Universal)
1/2 of a star out of 5
The Mars Volta love you, but they've chosen prog (and jazz fusion, and dub, and "sound manipulation"). It's no fun to admit, but your ménage à trois with Cedric and Omar has seen much better days, and it's only going to get worse the longer you drag it out.
The Mars Volta have always been selfish, and self-indulgent, lovers, favoring masturbatory solos and lyrical nonsense to actual songs. And just when you feel like you're getting close, they pull away again. Amputechture isn't an unexpected infidelity, but merely the latest step in their steady retreat from the world of listenable music.
Okay, this is hard to say, but the Mars Volta don't care about you anymore. I know you spent a lot of money (and hours) on all that vinyl, but this is not the genre-busting postband that seduced you with the Tremulant EP or that awesome first song on De-Loused in the Comatorium. Those were good times, weren't they? But, listen, it's over.
"Vicarious Atonement" opens Amputechture with over seven minutes of noodly guitars, sweeping background noises, and no drums. After that laborious introduction comes "Tetragrammaton," a 16-minute epic whose catchy moment occurs 10:22 minutes in. The entire album is a bath of midtempo "epics," lukewarm guitar arpeggios, digitally delayed Spanglish, ring modulation, pitch-shifted congas, etc.
In the absence of hooks, comprehensible lyrics, or visceral energy, we're left with bloat, free-jazz jamming, and an impenetrable world of self-referential non sequitur. Amputechture is the Mars Volta's first album without an overarching narrative concept, and, although their previous plot lines were hardly discernible without the Cliffs Notes, this one lacks even the vaguest lyrical entry point.
The tragedy is that the Mars Volta are an undeniably skilled ensemble, but they've become Omar's old one-armed scissor (remember those halcyon days of understandable metaphor?), a sharp, but ultimately useless blade, unable to cut it, and, seemingly, unable to cut it out. ERIC GRANDY