“The Mars Volta hits hard, loud, otherworldly”
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Tempo
Date: April 22, 2008
Self-indulgent, bloated, sprawling, navel-gazing, pretentious, ponderous and hyper-cerebral: On Sunday night, The Mars Volta stomped all over their critics and the verbiage typically bandied about like so much bombast about their sound, with a picaresque performance that started and stopped on a dime while wrenching the sold-out Aragon Ballroom through a rock marathon almost hitting the three-hour mark.
Misleadingly prepping the house with sentimental boleros and chansons, the speakers then unleashed Ennio Morricone’s “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” what proved a battle cry for the band to take stage and kick into an ear-ringingly memorable set that spanned the band’s beefy oeuvre while stressing recent release “The Bedlam in Goliath” (Universal).
With a touring lineup to match their studio thunder, The Mars Volta unleashed an array of rhythmic and harmonic textures from a six-man backing band including keys, percussion, bass, guitars and various woodwinds, from flute to sax and clarinet. Much of the delicate instrumentation got lost in the Aragon’s roaring reverb-wash, but the central duo of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on lead guitar and Cedric Bixler-Zavala on lead vocals cut through the chaos with sonic brilliance. It was a hard, loud, flamboyant show.
Feeling every kink and rip coming up through the neck of his guitar, Omar tickled the crowd with inspired solos, daring disbelief with otherworldly pacing and unexpected phrasing that switched between metal and jazz. Melting the microphone with pitch-perfect vocals, Cedric also hit the stage hard with gutsy footwork, leg-shuffling struts and full-bodied handstands.
Jumping between some sort of alternative world-jazz band and a punky prog outfit, The Mars Volta played to all shades of their elaborate and sometimes plodding sound but still kept the crowd attentive, even during lulls and more pensive turns of lengthy arrangements with few breaks and no clear sense of when the show would come crashing to an end.
And when the show ended, it was definitively done, too, with huge cheers and a palpable sense of exhaustion from the crowd.
« CD: “Tijuana Sound Machine” (Chicago Tribune) “Mexicanos al Grito de Rock” @ The Aragon (Chicago Tribune) »
Great review. Congratulations on another vivid and evocative piece of writing. I like the band, though I doubt they’ll be playing New Haven in the near future.
Agreed. Due to ankle pain/arthritis, I sat in the balcony and there was ALWAYS something impressive happening on every square foot across that huge Aragon stage.