Countdown to Mars

IN THE HIGH school cafeteria of rock history, the '60s table would be the cool one where everyone wants to sit – with kids like Dylan, the Stones, and the Beatles – and on the beginning end of the mostly vacant '70s table would be the A/V kids like Yes, King Crimson, and Rush, playing D&D over corndogs while the rest of the decade is out by the dumpsters getting stoned. The A/V kids' fierce experimentation – with song structures on the part of musicians, and substances by the audiences – synced up around 1970 to create the virtuosic extravagance of prog rock, which somehow made mind-boggling time signatures and meandering 20-minute songs palatable. Now bands like System of a Down, the Mars Volta, and, to some extent, even Radiohead are finding relevance in a genre that was pushed to the margins after alienating the DIY fan base of rock with a complexity that might only have been adored by music theory phenoms.

The Mars Volta's recent album, Frances the Mute (Universal), uses elements of prog, such as labyrinthine song structures and technical mastery, to present the story of an orphan searching for his birth parents. Musically, the album is all over the map. Some of the chord progressions, vocal acrobatics, and rhythmic attitudes recall Led Zeppelin's finer moments – without a single Robert Plant-ian "baby," though vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala has an odd lyrical fixation on corpses and wombs – while salsa grooves and synthetic scenery interplay with prog explosions and psychedelic jams, thanks to guitarist Omar Rodriguez. In a time of iTunes and the presumed short attention span of an MTV generation, the commercial success of this 76-minute monster seemed completely improbable.

But not quite. To date Frances has sold more than 400,000 copies. Though Internet music stores allow for greater sampling and exposure for bands, the album format will always endure because, as with Frances the Mute, it allows artists to build a broader emotional spectrum than they can during an isolated, three-and-a-half-minute pop song. Sometimes you may want to pick and choose, buffet-style, from singles to build your own musical meal, but occasionally you crave a prix fixe, seven-course dinner prepared by artists such as the Mars Volta, where one sonic serving expertly informs the next. Increased sales (growing 28 percent during the '90s and 87 percent in the past year) of vinyl – a format on which full-lengths are usually listened to in their entirety – and an almost equal ratio of album sales to single sales on iTunes, at least at its inception, shows that audience agendas and tastes have not necessarily been dictated by the avenues of distribution.

Yet the album is also a response to a world where your bank account, library, and music collection can all fit in your pocket, no longer confined to the original physical artifacts. Today it's possible to do your shopping without fingering a bill, be in a relationship without touching more than your keyboard, and keep up to date on world events without ever leaving your house.

Sonically, Frances is an intentionally futile quest for concreteness, much like the unnamed protagonist's search for the certainty of knowing his birth parents and his origins. Perhaps appropriately, his story is completely buried by enigmatic lines like "His orifice icicles hemorrhaged / By combing her torso to a pile / Perspired the trophy shelves made room for his collapse," on "Cassandra Gemini." Frances emulates the stream of consciousness of post-everything hyperstimulation, a confusion of reference points, transcending Radiohead's bleak future shock by reveling in the erosion of form.

Keith Axline