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No Beatles, no Wings. No At the Drive-In, no Mars Volta
No Beatles, no Wings. No At the Drive-In, no Mars Volta.
Hmm. Given that comparison, it may be worth starting again. At the Drive-In added another chapter to the long, rich history of Texas music by combining the flash and political astuteness of the MC5 with that indefinable something that seemed about to win them a large audience in 2000. But no sooner had fourth album Relationship of Command skirted the Top 100 before intra-band hassles finished the group off.
Singer Cedric Bixler and guitarist Omar Rodriguez wasted little time in forming a new outfit that would build on At the Drive-In's version of the MC5's more avant-garde tendencies. While other ATDIers found work in the dull emo exponent Sparta, Bixler and Rodriguez were intent on exploring jazz and other sounds that might take them out of the mainstream alternative sphere while keeping a core of fans who got it.
Having already collaborated with Ikey Owens of the Long Beach Dub All-Stars and Jeremy Michael Ward in ATDI side project De Facto, they seemed prepared to head for new horizons after bringing them into the Mars Volta fold. The quartet released De-Loused in the Comatorium through a deal with Universal in 2003, and toured Europe with the Red Hot Chili Peppers -- a move that ensured both mainstream credibility and exposure to perhaps the biggest audiences Bixler and Rodriguez had yet seen.
Unfortunately, Ward, an essential part of the band's lineup due to his dub leanings and his talent for bringing treated sounds into the mix, overdosed not long after the group returned from the Chili Peppers dates -- a tragedy that recalled that band's own loss of guitarist Hillel Slovak in the late '80s.
In 2005, Mars Volta returned with their second full-length, the ambitious song-cycle Francis the Mute, which, like their first CD, took its inspiration from rather gothic circumstances. But instead of being fueled by the death of a surrealistic painter, like De-Loused... was, this prog rock masterwork -- divided into five suites -- takes its subject matter from an anonymous diary found in the back of a car by their fallen compatriot, Jeremy Ward. It is both homage to him and a feverish and baroque search for self that conjures up the same majesty and gravity as Led Zeppelin three decades before.
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