LISTED: 30 Best Albums of the Last Decade (2000 - 2009)

*As the year 2010 is about to draw its curtain close, it is the time of the year (of any year) for many music sites and blogs to come up with a top list of albums of the year. Yes indeed the year 2010 has seen many interesting releases worthy of at least a top 20 list. But here at The Genuine Mind Zine we decided to do things a bit different and take a look at some of the best (of the best) releases throughout the last decade. This may not be the most comprehensive list around, lack of hip hop records for one, but all the albums listed here are indeed the most precious of last decade's precious gems.

6. The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute (2005)


First of all, let's get the basics out of the way so that we can delve further into what this album is doing here at the giddy heights of number 6 just so to carefully avoid chronic brain damage among you the readers - The Mars Volta are mentalists. They are not your typical run-of-the-mill rock band that your mom, or spouse, or neighbor, will approve. Everything that they do, every single one of it must be exaggerated by a million times, stuff it in a bag and put it on a roller coaster ride (and must I add that the roller coaster ride is the one that goes around the entire galaxy), then take it off and shred it to pieces, then they begin again; and they do all that not because they wanted to or because they can, but because they are The Mars Volta. In other words, they are absolutely ridiculous.

Item number 1 done, now comes item number 2: to reiterate the point that I've made in the previous paragraph, everything that The Mars Volta do has to be humongous. This particular characteristics comes from Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez's love of throwing the conventional songwriting method into the industrial-sized skip (this is important) and let lunacy takes center stage. They are the kind of people you'd imagine will go to the recording studio on a Tuesday morning wearing nothing but thongs and rubber flip flops and sporting a white horn-rimmed glasses. And to further enhance their already unconventional songwriting method, every little detail of their songs has to be exaggerated. Let's say we have a ten minutes composition, and let's say there are a total of 1354 chords that can be played on the guitar, The Mars Volta will give you all 1354 chords within 3 minutes, and that's only one-third of the entire length of the song, mind you. As a result, the final product has always been a dizzying collection of guitar licks flying at you at every angle in a constant barrage. In other words, they are absolutely ridiculous.

Item number 3: the lyrics. Another fact that we should establish about The Mars Volta is that they are absolute mental when it comes to lyrics craftsmanship. Consider figure 3.1:
(My nails peel back / When the taxidermist ruined / Goose stepped the freckling impatience / All the brittle tombs) (from "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus")
Certain musicians will try to put a story behind their songs and usually that is achieved through the lyrics; some wanted to provoke a brainstorm through words and terms that challenges the listener's knowledge or long-held beliefs; some just want to make clear of their own feelings or emotions about something; and some just wanted to have fun with their English or wanted to flex their vocabulary muscle. The Mars Volta though is on an entirely different plane of thought: they just don't give a shit about what they were singing. Most of the time, their lyrics are so mind-boggling, it makes solving the Da Vinci's code seems as easy as sitting down on a chair. Consider figure 3.2:
(There was a frail syrup dripping off / His lap danced lapel, punctuated by her / Decrepit prowl she washed down the hatching / Gizzard soft as a mane of needles / His orifice icicles hemorrhaged) (from "Miranda, That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore part b) Pour Another Icepick")
Made any sense out of the above quoted lyrics yet? Thought so. It's like reading the poetry of Luis Bunuel whose head has just turned into a cow's. In other words, they are absolutely ridiculous.

So with all that facts established real nice, it is now only a matter of choosing which album that they have produced over the years which best covers all the above-mentioned characteristics: Frances the Mute. It is an album of absolute excess - most of the time it stretches one's patience to the limit, refusing to come round in full circle and make any sense of itself, or try to explain the logic behind anything. In fact, there is not even a single logic behind this album. It is just a 76 minutes record worth of exercise in awesomeness. Listen to the album for the first 3-4 times and you will be frustrated at how convoluted and warped and indulgent this album is. There are too many moments scattered all over the album where they spend on it doing absolutely nothing. There is no movement, no action, nothing. And the really frustrating thing is that those moments are not a pause, something which this album does not have, at all. So, it's a very long, draggy, pointless album that focuses on a topic that does not make any sense at all. But then this album is brilliant because very rarely you get to hear an album that is excessively indulgent in being awesome. It's a hate-love relationship with this album - you hated it because it is everything that would drive a sane person up the wall with its smug nature. But then you will love it because no other album can give you such strong emotion towards it. In other words, they are absolutely fantastic.