The Mars Volta
The Mars Volta are pulling their touring socks up again soon and landing here for Splendour In The Grass (and select sideshows), as well as releasing their sixth album. Singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala is a bewitching and engrossing feller to watch perform, so why shouldn't his conversations be any different? Chatting as he drove his former stomping ground of Pasadena, he is enthusiastic about his upcoming return to Australia, the fifth with long time collaborator Omar Rodriguez-Lopez as a part of this project, excluding their time together in hardcore band At The Drive-In. "I can't put my finger on why we love coming to Australia so much," Cedric says. "I feel like the day I put my finger on it is the day it's gonna stop being fun. It's a lot like my relationship with Omar; I don't try to give it a name." Cedric and Omar have now performed together for fifteen years and remain the core of The Mars Volta, with a well-documented turnstile of other members. Turbulence has followed the band since their inception, with live shows a concoction of drug use and musical chaos as the band found it's feet. While time has tempered the self-destructive elements of the band, the musical forces are as frenzied as ever, something Cedric credits Omar for. "The fact is that Omar likes to throw a monkey wrench at the comfort zone that everyone in the band has, and he is really not into swimming in the same waters. I can definitely say there are a lot of songs that might sound similar, but we really, really try to change it up record after record, and I think this new record is going to be really symbolic of that. It's very symbolic of the failed attempt of the last record to be more stripped back; now we have the right drummer to interpret that." I ask if it's difficult to find the core of a song amongst such a fluctuating line-up, or do the musicians on hand in fact inform the songs each time they're performed? "I think if anything it is hard, but you have to just embrace the change and embrace that the songs are always going to be played differently," Cedric replies. "I think the key thing for an audience to remember is if you don't watch them during that one tour, then you probably won't see it again. So it's kind of like a necessity in coming to see us. I'm okay with that, I'm comfortable with knowing there's never going to be a solid band; there's always going to be a phase one, phase two, phase three, that's just the way it is, really." I bring Cedric back to his comments about inclusion of drummer Deantoni Parks on the recording of their sixth studio album. Parks was already known to the band, having previous filled in after Blake Fleming was fired mid-tour in 2006 as TMV supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers. "It was a really bad situation," Cedric recalls of Parks first performances in the band. "He came in and had to learn, like, four songs, and then a lot of the times we were like, 'ok, learn this and just kind of improvise it for a while.' We only had about a forty minute slot opening up for the Chili Peppers when that happened, and then we did some festival shows, but I really felt like it didn't do him justice, you know? He's an amazing songwriter too, he's an amazing re-mixer, and is just a force to be reckoned with. He is truly not just a drummer; he is an artist. He has that capacity to take the Ringo Starr approach, which is respecting the song and not just overplaying like a lot of the past incarnations of our band have been like." Parks contribution to the upcoming album remains to be heard, but Cedric makes clear that he has been one of the key contributors working alongside Omar creatively since the band was last here for the Big Day Out in 2010. "When we let Thomas (Pridgen, former drummer) go, we were in the middle of having to honour all these dates which included the Big Day Out performances last time, for which we had a drummer named Dave Elitch. But when that happened, we were working on the side on this record that Omar had been making with Deantoni, which was a lot of heavy synth and different kinds of song structures. We just jumped on it and made it a Volta record, and then we started writing more stuff with him, and in the process it became what our sixth album is gonna be." The Mars Volta will perform at the Thebarton Theatre on Mon 8 Aug. Their sixth studio album remains in the works. By Matt Panag  |
Issue 523
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