Noctourniquet - March 27th (-ish)

I'm in a bit of daze these days, tired like an old sock. Work is crazy. I don't mean "work has been crazy these days", I mean work is crazy, in itself, as a concept and activity.
But nevermind that.
So I've been listening to Noctourniquet quite a few times now and, tired as I am, I can't see the staggering difference from their past albums, the "exploration of uncharted..." blah blah. Don't get me wrong, the album is good, it's a Mars Volta album, after all. But guess what: it freaking sounds like Mars Volta. Which is good, I like that in band, to, you know, sound like themselves. But apart from some electronic squeaks and squeals (which they've been toying with since "Copernicus" anyway), I don't really see what the uncharted territory really is. Alright, I am not a musician myself, I will carelessly stroll over brilliant little technical subtleties like a marketing manager through an art gallery, I will not miss a beat. It sounds like Mars Volta, fuck it, good enough for me.
Ok, maybe the music is a bit less clustered. And by that I mean it's not as urgently progressive as in the past. And by urgently progressive I mean inexplicably fucking awesome. The music is somewhat more direct, simpler. But simple to Mars Volta is like unbelievably impossible to Placebo, so. But ultimately it does sound like Mars Volta, Mars Volta with one hand behind their back, that is.

Ok, maybe not this one:

The Mars Volta - The Malkin Jewel


This one is different, I'll say that. I don't know what they've tried here, but I feel a bit of Primus in there, bit of  Tom Waits, bit of ...I don't know. It's a different sort of theatricals here. It's fractured and limping and bleeding in the sand, but the clothes are impeccable, you know? It sounds a lot more like something else that I can't put my finger on right now. I have my references and they have theirs (Solomon Grundy?) and I'm pretty sure Omar and Cedric would raise their respective eyebrows reading the above mentioned, I'm sure that Primus and Tom Waits never crossed their minds, but there you have it. But it doesn't matter who is sounds like, it matters what it sounds like. And it sounds like fish dragged through hot coal, so that's pretty awesome.

And then, of course, the creamy-dreamy one:

The Mars Volta - Imago