Vol. XXXIII, Issue 11
CULTURE
THE MARS VOLTA
Noctourniquet
by Nick Statt
7ǣǠ 0ǜǭǮ 9Ǫǧǯǜ is very much a group of
groping musicians—unfathomably creative at their best and yet simultaneously frustrated by their limitations and disdainful of their critics and fans’ expectations. After six albums and 11 years, the band is still forcing listeners to constantly reevaluate what it is they like about its progrock musings, which jump from 32-minute, mind-numbing epics to three-and-a-half-minute airy low-tempo tracks that could pass for Radiohead if Thom Yorke had a splash of Spanish ancestry and drummer Phil Selway were a bit more of a spaz. 3GDHQ LNRS QDBDMS DƤNQS Noctourniquet, displays the A@MCŗR KNUD ENQ NƤDMCHMF @KK RDMRDR NE BNLENQS @MC FDMQD KHMDR ATS HM RTBG @ V@X SG@S ENQ SGD UDQX ƥQRS SHLD EDDKR RS@KD ,X HMHSH@K HLOTKRD @ESDQ KHRSDMHMF SN SGD ƥQRS SGQDD tracks, “The Whip Hand,” “Aegis” and “Dyslexicon”— all of which hover around four and a half minutes and push the same in-between aesthetic of their preceding “acoustic” DƤNQS Octahedron, and the blistering fury of Bedlam in Goliath— is to travel back to 2003. It was two years after TMV’s formation and the year of their debut, De-loused in the Comatorium, which managed to pick up the virtuosic QDLM@MSR @MC DƤNQSKDRR DMDQFX NE S SGD #QHUD (M @MC channel it into something spectacular, namely tracks like
“Eriatarka” and “Cicatriz ESP.” But all these years later, Noctourniquet BNLDR NƤ @R an essentially slowed-down, instrumentally constrained “rock” album with a number of ballad-esque tracks and a few high-speed traditional TMV moments. There are some instances of transcendent bliss when the slow-jam vibes start threading truly beautiful mixtures, when Cedric !HWKDQ 9@U@K@ŗR RNLDSHLDR DƤDBSHUD ATS LNRSKX M@R@KKX @MC inconsistent vocals neatly coalesce with Omar RodríguezLópez’s hyper-meticulous background noise construction. It comes through on “Empty Vessels Make the Loudest 2NTMCRŚ @MC ř5DC@L@K@CX Ś ATS SGD NMKX SQTKX ƥQDVNQJ display of their roots is on “Molochwalker,” a short but explosively awesome reminder of how skilled and absurd these musicians can truly be. 3GD @KATL CNDR MNSGHMF SN SQTKX NƤDMC TMLNUHMF hardcore fans, but those that have been driven to the fence after years of failed reimaginings of the mastery of De-Loused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute don’t have a lot to pull them back down. Sadly, it’s people like that, myself included, that would rather just see RodriguezLopez and Bixler-Zavala take At the Drive-In, reuniting after 11 years this summer at Coachella, back to the studio and let The Mars Volta’s legacy end here.
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