- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Alternative PressIt's already the most riveting album of 2005--provided you're ready to carve a wide enough hole in your consciousness to accept it. [Mar 2005, p.130]
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FilterFrances the Mute documents the Mars Volta as a passionate and explosive band that has grown capable of taking the music in a hundred different directions. [#14, p.96]
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SpinFrances explores an explosive groove Comatorium only implied. [Mar 2005, p.83]
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UncutFrances The Mute smells like another concept album, is far too long and so pretentious as to be farcial. Amazingly, it's also mighty entertaining. [Mar 2005, p.91]
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An incredibly accomplished record, a true testament to the band’s imagination, intellectual curiosity and outrageous musical talent.... Unfortunately, “Frances The Mute” is also awful.
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A homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity.
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Miraculously the lyrics never sound like the pompous shite they undoubtedly are. They fit the music and make the whole picture even more laughably and absurdly brilliant.
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The music combines the kitchen-sink inclusiveness of psychedelia with the swerves and jolts of the hip-hop era, to approach the ravenous eclecticism of Latin alternative rock. [27 Feb 2005]
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If you've got the time to dig in, Frances the Mute proves a cohesive, intricate and expertly layered experience.
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Whereas the somewhat timid and searching De-Loused in the Comatorium was all about surprising audience, critic, and probably the band itself, Frances the Mute is a self-assured organic animal that should come as no surprise to anyone.
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There are hardly any virtues to this record at all.
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Proponents of Mars Volta’s Frances the Mute will claim that anyone who doesn’t like the album simply can’t handle the lyrical depth and amazingly multi-layered musical complexity; critics who pan the release will claim it’s overlong, indulgent, and -- did we mention indulgent? The truth, as usual, falls somewhere in between.
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On the whole, the record sounds more like the blueprint for a stunning live show than like a viable document of a top-flight hard rock band.
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Everything that was great about De-Loused in the Comatorium is blatantly absent, while all of the negatives now protrude like barnacled tumors.
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Q MagazineInsane, extraordinary. [Mar 2005, p.95]
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The 77-minute-long "Frances" unfolds upon multiple listens, sometimes threatening to collapse under its own pretensions (meandering musical passages, sound effects), but ultimately, it is an ambitious and rewarding album.
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New Musical Express (NME)Within this impressive, ambitious, often stupid whole, are moments of melthing human beauty. [29 Feb 2005, p.65]
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BlenderThis is a visceral, powerful muso's record, a nerve-jangling explosion in a drum clinic. [Apr 2005, p.111]
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It's practically a compulsory purchase.
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It’s not prog rock. It’s not punk rock. It’s not emo. It’s not indie. It’s just music, and it will incinerate your mind if you let it.
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Perhaps the only match for the cerebral weirdness and eventual beauty of Mars Volta's lyrics is their music itself.
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With Frances the Mute, the Mars Volta have unfurled a big and bold artistic statement... Unfortunately, that bold artistic statement is rife with pomposity and glimpses of prog-rock at its most horrifically self-indulgent.
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MojoListen to Frances The Mute without any prog-induced prejudice... and it emerges as the triumphant sound of a band bound only by their imagination. [Apr 2005, p.86]
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Frances bursts at the jewel-case hinges with Comatorium’s trademarks: musical inventiveness and wildly emotive vocals.
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Under The RadarOmar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala are fantastically talented musicians and arrangers. But until they rein in their astronomical pretension, they'll always look more important than they truly are. [#9]
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MagnetDuring its most commercial moments, Frances ventures dangerously close to System Of A Down, without the nu-metal grandstanding or fake volatility. [#67, p.106]
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The Wire[An] overstuffed sound hurricane. [#255, p.58]
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Discipline is a crucial factor in good progressive rock, and despite Theodore's brilliant drumming, Rodriguez's flashy guitar, and Bixler's lyrical skill, there's very little of that discipline here. [Avg of two scores: 80/40]
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You have to give them credit for ambition, though, because you're not going to find this particular witches' brew anywhere else.
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The Mars Volta's second album is an exhilarating transgression: concussive, nonlinear rhythms; mad-dog guitar algebra; bloody-nightmare suites sung in bilingual free verse. In short, the beastly spawn of Radiohead's OK Computer and Rush's 2112.
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Entertainment WeeklyThe CD has moments of undeniable beauty and power; it may prove to be one of those "difficult" records that repays with repeat listens. [4 Mar 2005, p.72]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 299 out of 348
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Mixed: 12 out of 348
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Negative: 37 out of 348
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Sep 10, 2010
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SeamusSJan 23, 2006
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piesoreFeb 27, 2005