Mars Volta possibly the best band of the 2000s - Music

craola

crayon disciple

Location: pdx

benpaco wrote:

Hell, Bon Iver's Holocene is technically in one measure of 5/4, two measures 4/4, one measure 2/4, two measures 4/4, repeat. The song just does it more subtly than some of the prog rock/math rock/etc out there that has more notably strange shifts.

a lot of the time, you don't recognize a song's time signature deviates from standard 4/4 or 3/4. songs are way more interesting to me when the time signature doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. it shouldn't be a quality you catch onto immediately because it should go with a song's natural flow.
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RoundTheBend

I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

RockyRaccoon wrote:

sethmadsen wrote:

RockyRaccoon wrote:

benpaco wrote:

Hell, Bon Iver's Holocene is technically in one measure of 5/4, two measures 4/4, one measure 2/4, two measures 4/4, repeat. The song just does it more subtly than some of the prog rock/math rock/etc out there that has more notably strange shifts.

IDK there's a lot of music out there that does fun things with time signatures and I feel like what seth might have been trying to praise really was a style more than a specific band. Am I right at all?

Yea, I mean complicated time signatures are interesting, but it doesn't mean much, other than making you go "huh. That's neat"

I mean shit, "Silent Lucidity" by Queensryche is in 15/16, it doesn't make the song good (though I do like it, just not for the time signature). It's cool that Tool's "Lateralus" changes time signatures in a Fibonacci sequence, but that doesn't make the song good, it's just interesting.

Also, yea, complicated time signatures have been in music forever, Mars Volta is hardly unique in that sense. Just listen to some music from the Baroque era if you wanna hear strange, weird, complicated time signatures.

It's not terribly common in rock though. I mean 4/4 and 3/4 are a vast majority if not closer to most rock music?

Well yea, 4/4 and 3/4 are the most common time signatures in Western music.

And if you're going to go as broad as "rock", yea maybe, that covers so much it's impossible to know. But if you go with "progressive rock", which is more what Mars Volta is, it's not as uncommon. Look at stuff from Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Rush, Zappa, you'll see complicated time signatures all over the place.

VERY good point.

RoundTheBend

I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Gowi wrote:

Battles

Love these guys.

Space-Dementia

sethmadsen wrote:

What did you mean by: over-the-top (I'm guessing the big belting choruses, etc?), they have something in mind but they can't realize it (maybe you didn't like the symphony?), crazy singing, aspire to be bigger than they really are (I think I have a hard time reading this trait in bands... I hear it all the time from Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, U2... basically any big band... what's the evidence- not that I'm disagreeing, I'm just trying to understand).

I really liked their first four albums, and The Resistance wasn't bad, but I was mainly thinking of their latest two albums when I wrote this. While both T2L and Drones have a handful of good songs on them, they're kind of messy overall. Follow Me, Unsustainable, and Save Me (all from The 2nd Law) are songs I think they never should have made just because they don't add anything to their quality, and actually detract from it. On the first two songs, they were trying to do something that was so out of the way for them that it just became pop trash, which pissed me off because Muse was the band I got into to get away from pop trash. And then Save Me was just a forgettable song that I heard twice and never wanted to hear again. Meanwhile, Drones represents more of them having something in mind but not realizing it. They knew they wanted to write a concept album with a distinct story, like The Wall or American Idiot, but they couldn't write a story while also writing poetry. The lyrics are really cringe-worthy. They also wanted to go back to their original sound but couldn't. Sure, Reapers and The Handler are great songs, but songs like Revolt, Aftermath, Mercy, Drones, and honestly The Globalist are forgettable. There's just no sense of the heavy rock with hints of Radiohead that they showed up until BH&R. At this point they're just trying to do more than they have up their sleeves.

sethmadsen wrote:

Thing I don't like about them is they've been around long enough to maybe push the envelope and do something different, but I feel they have the same formula for their music.
I mean Foo Fighters often do this same formula problem too, and I still largely respect them.
And they are good at what they do so why change, right?

Why change? Because it gets boring. I'll go along with your example of the Foo Fighters. Sure they have some fantastic singles and some pretty good albums, but after a while I just get all their songs mixed up because they're all so similar. Whereas a band like Radiohead, I recall each song because they're all so different. I don't know. I still like Muse, but I'm definitely realizing why people don't like them.
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RoundTheBend

I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Space-Dementia wrote:

I really liked their first four albums, and The Resistance wasn't bad, but I was mainly thinking of their latest two albums when I wrote this. While both T2L and Drones have a handful of good songs on them, they're kind of messy overall.

Totally agree with most of what you said except maybe different songs and well except that I think Drones was significantly better. I have T2L on vinyl (4 disks) and I really only listen to the first 3 songs and last three songs, with the exception of animals once in a while.

Save Me is the worst Muse song ever written. I mean it's cool that Wolstenholme was able to sing a couple songs on the album, but that song should never have been put on the album.

I actually really like Unsustainable... probably equally for the message as for the music. The whole attempt to make a dubstep sound from a normal band... I think they did alright. It was rad live, that's for sure.

I remember being equally frustrated with King of Limbs from Radiohead... I felt that both KOL and T2L were lackluster efforts with some amazing work and some really terrible work.

Tracks I feel range from lackluster to terrible from Drones:
Revolt
Aftermath
The Globalist

But I actually love the polyphonic melody/singing on the song Drones.

As for why change:
No NEED... I mean if someone does something really well, why not just keep doing it?

What blows me away though, and for me is a sign of a REALLY good artist, is the artist is able to transform their sound without suffering artistic quality/aesthetic. For me that's when a band/artist goes from great to amazing.

Foo Fighters and Muse will always be great alternative rock bands, but they will never be on the same level as R.E.M., U2, or Radiohead... unless of course they make that change.

I will say Foo Fighters kind of did it with their skin and bones tour, along with the second half of In Your Honour... but I feel it wasn't quite enough (especially since it was one off and they have since kind of abandoned anything like that... and possibly for the better because Wasting Light was amazing compared to EPSG.

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Age: 40

well if you're gonna do that you should also listen to mu-ziq and luke vibert and squarepusher and then also the labels that were started by artists (skam from autechre, planet mu from mu-ziq, rephlex from aphex twin) and get all the cool stuff from bogdan raczynski, venetian snares, team doyobi and so many others. but that'll only give you a taste of the american side of things, so you'll also need to dig in on tigerbeat6 and schematic record's output, like o9 - church of the ghetto pc, if you're doing this that's absolutely something you'll need to hear, or like sublight records too they were shortlived but had some great stuff like the datach'i albums they put out, and also you'll probably be a little oversaturated on the dsp heavy stuff by this point so you'll probably want to track down some stuff that Merck put out, like proswell or something. at least that's how I'd do it. oh and also of course you can't skip out on the warp records deep cuts, like they pretend that jamie lidell - muddlin gear doesnt exist, had it removed from spotify and everything, but it does exist and is so crazy you have to check it out. and then there's tons of other stuff I'm leaving out like ninja tune or millie plateaux, but yeah, there's a lot to dive into if you're feeling the pull down that stream of electronic music.

buckchip

Gender: Male

Age: 30

mars volta is damn good but i still think arcade fire is the best band of 2000s