RockRoast

The Mars Volta strikes me as a band that is nearly bursting with creative energy. In the last six years, they’ve put out four hour-plus albums. And there’s so much going on in their songs that it has to take at least ten times as many ideas to put a Mars Volta song together than it does for a song by Nickelback or 3 Doors Down. But almost as a rule, The Mars Volta has too many ideas for their own good.

Their latest CD, “The Bedlam in Goliath,” is as close to an exception to that rule as I’ve seen them get. The album-opener, “Aberinkula,” is powerful and energetic, driven by a great riff and a surprisingly catchy melody. And sadly, “Aberinkula” is also the album’s peak. “Metatron” attempts to continue in the same energetic, infectious vein, but it suffers from an overlong arrangement and an aimless, meandering vocal melody. “Ilyena” introduces a good groove, but fails to capitalize on it. Halfway through, the song is hijacked by annoying and overused vocal effects that ruin any replay value the song may have already achieved. It’s absolutely tragic.

The middle of the album continues in the similitude of the first three tracks: Each song has some fantastic melody or riff or instrumental section that is promptly ruined by some unnecessary thing the band threw in. “Goliath” sports some well-arranged music dragged down by a flat-lining melody near the end. “Tourniquet Man” starts off looking like a nice little ballad and ends up as a disturbing, futuristic cacophony. “Askepios” contains a jaw-droppingly epic section in the middle that is followed almost immediately by more distorted vocals that implore the listener to wonder exactly what mixture of drugs was used during the recording and production processes.

“Ouroborous” marked a refreshing return to the untainted energy and musicianship of the front end of the album. This is followed by the nine-minute “Soothsayer,” which again uses bizarre production on the vocals. But this time the weirdness achieves a priceless haunting tone and only aids in the construction of a beautiful, if somewhat drawn-out arrangement. “Conjugal Burns” seems to be a decent closer, but it is plagued by two serious problems: First, a minute or two from its conclusion, the song bursts into a section of unprecedented hideousness, a kind of unimaginably freakier incarnation of “Faaip de Oiad” from Tool’s “Lateralus.” Second, the album seems to end mid-riff, leaving the listener hanging, waiting for that final note that will never come. While it might be a clever trick for the band to play on their fans, it’s frustrating and painfully unsatisfying.

And, of course, it goes without saying that the entire seventy-six minutes of “The Bedlam in Goliath” is marred by impenetrable, indecipherable, incoherent lyrics that are often laughable in their imagery and metaphor-mixing. But despite containing some of the same frustrating aspects of The Mars Volta’s last few albums, “The Bedlam in Goliath” succeeded in getting me hooked on a few of their songs, something their previous work had never accomplished. “Aberinkula,” “Ouroborous,” and “Soothsayer” are new favorites of mine. I have to give the band some well-earned respect for making their own kind of music on their own terms, but their unabashed idiosyncrasies continue to bother me.

But this latest release was significantly more digestible, at least for me. I’m optimistic about the direction The Mars Volta may be headed in. And if that direction results in a realization that weirdness for weirdness’ sake and nonconformist idiosyncrasy in the name of personal expression are not inherently advantageous, then I will be the first in line to buy their next album.

I should have thought of this a long time ago. At the end of the year I’ll be drawing up a Best-of-2008 list just like everybody else, but I’d like to try and predict what that list will be. This is a little difficult because there’s plenty of time left in the year for albums that aren’t even rumored yet to be rumored, written, recorded, and released before the year ends. But with a little research and a handy crystal ball, I’ve postulated that, come the end of the year, my list might look a little bit like this:

PROJECTED TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2008
1. Ayreon - 01001101
Available at Amazon.com
2. Opeth - Watershed
Available from Roadrunner Records on May 30.
Official Site
3. Marco Sfogli - There’s Hope
Available from Lion Music on February 15.
Official Site
4. Green Day - ???
2007 Interview with Billie Joe Armstrong
5. 3 Doors Down - 3 Doors Down
Available from Universal Republic Records on May 6.
Official Site
6. Coldplay - ???
Expected in June. Produced by Brian Eno.
7. True Symphonic Rockestra - Concerto in True Minor
To be released on March 28th…label details a bit sketchy.
Official site with several free tracks for download
8. Weezer - ???
Release date unknown
9. The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
Available at Amazon.com
10. Michelle Branch - ???
Expected in summer
Official Site

Other possibilities that seem unlikely to make it out by the end of 2008:
Superior - New World Order
Breaking Benjamin’s fourth album
Nickelback’s sixth album
Muse’s fifth album
James LaBrie’s second album

Any of those last few maybes could be a contender for the top few spots, but I don’t have enough faith in them to assume they’ll be out by the time 2009 rolls around. Without them, it could still be a pretty good year for music. But with them, it could be a great year.

We’ll see how things work out.

I recently read a fascinating article about pitch correction in recorded music. This guy collected ten of what he considered to be egregious examples of “auto-tune abuse in pop music” and put a ten second clip of each one into a nice little mp3 for us to listen to.

It actually surprised me. While some of his examples are probably using pitch correction for a specific effect, I can’t deny that this guy has a good ear and a good handle on a real problem. When listening for it specifically, I couldn’t deny the overuse of this kind of thing, even in performances by people who I consider to be talented singers, such as Avril Lavigne, Natasha Bedingfield, and that guy from Maroon 5. Okay, his name is Adam Levine, but I hesitate to share the fact that I know that off the top of my head.

Then, not an hour after reading that article, I was listening to “Tetragrammaton” by The Mars Volta, and I came across the section in the middle that uses about a million pitch corrections over the course of thirty seconds. In one interview, The Mars Volta’s vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala explained that on that particular song, his bandmate liked the first rough vocal take so much that they decided to use it as the final version, despite some sections during which Bixler-Zavala struggled to find a tune. On some of these moments, the band used pitch correction to force the vocal performance into something they felt sounded better.

And that little bit of “Tetragrammaton” does sound pretty cool, at least for a little while. But it brings up one of Hometracked’s main points: “…an auto-tuner isn’t a shortcut to a perfect performance. If you can’t sing the song properly, no amount of post-processing will make it sound like you did.” And I couldn’t agree more. It’s bad enough that there doesn’t seem to be enough focus on vocals and harmonies in some pop music. But trying to work around mediocre vocals to make them sound good anyway is just stupid.

Although…The Mars Volta isn’t exactly what you’d call pop music, but they aren’t the only band that misuses this effect.

And as far as using pitch correction for an effect goes, it’s overdone and overrated. It sounded cool for Cher, and it’s sounded cool for a few others, but it’s not as though throwing in some cool vocal pitch bends is going to make people go, “Ah! Now they’re offering me something new and innovative that I’ve never heard before!” If you want something new and innovative, it’s more important to put it in the music than in the production.

Not that I expect the pop music world to understand that.