Rather than repeat myself I'll just cut and paste the review I wrote for Tsunami magazine ( http://www.tsunamimag.com )
THE MARS VOLTA
The Arena 24 January 2006
I thought The Mars Volta were incredible at the Big Day Out... Even that could not prepare me for what they unleashed two days later at the Arena. Bursting with energy and practised like scholars they delivered the greatest show I have ever seen. Again. Stretching their seven song set to two hours and twenty minutes, they held the packed venue in the palm of their collective hands. Mexican brassband music welcomed them to the stage and they immediately pounded into "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus", which was played with even more voracity than at the Big Day Out. Next up was "L'Via L'Viaquez", played almost exactly like the album version but with extended solo sections at the end.
The band then treated us to a gorgeous reworking of "Eriatarka" which featured momentary deviations into droning pulses and new jam sections. Following this they played the shortest song of the night, an immensely powerful rendition of "The Widow" that must have pleased many of the more casual fans in the audience. After this the first track taken from their debut album was brought out, "Drunkship of Lanterns", and the conventions of language are not fit to describe the journey they took us on during the course of it's half-an-hour-plus reading. Going into some of the deepest, most beautiful and most sinister material of their career, they went places that I have heard no other band venture to.
This tense atmosphere was extended immediately after by the second performance ever of "Frances the Mute", executed again with the utmost perfection and devastatingly powerful in its live incarnation. The mood was lifted in a flash when they slammed into "Roulette Dares (This is the Haunt of)" like madmen, flailing as they attacked their instuments. The evening was brought to a climax with the immense closing track of Frances the Mute, "Cassandra Gemini", a half an hour multi-levelled trip through free jazz and deep space acid-rock. The crowd went wild with applause and it was many minutes before those calling for an encore realized that they would have to walk away.
THE MARS VOLTA
The Arena 24 January 2006
I thought The Mars Volta were incredible at the Big Day Out... Even that could not prepare me for what they unleashed two days later at the Arena. Bursting with energy and practised like scholars they delivered the greatest show I have ever seen. Again. Stretching their seven song set to two hours and twenty minutes, they held the packed venue in the palm of their collective hands. Mexican brassband music welcomed them to the stage and they immediately pounded into "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus", which was played with even more voracity than at the Big Day Out. Next up was "L'Via L'Viaquez", played almost exactly like the album version but with extended solo sections at the end.
The band then treated us to a gorgeous reworking of "Eriatarka" which featured momentary deviations into droning pulses and new jam sections. Following this they played the shortest song of the night, an immensely powerful rendition of "The Widow" that must have pleased many of the more casual fans in the audience. After this the first track taken from their debut album was brought out, "Drunkship of Lanterns", and the conventions of language are not fit to describe the journey they took us on during the course of it's half-an-hour-plus reading. Going into some of the deepest, most beautiful and most sinister material of their career, they went places that I have heard no other band venture to.
This tense atmosphere was extended immediately after by the second performance ever of "Frances the Mute", executed again with the utmost perfection and devastatingly powerful in its live incarnation. The mood was lifted in a flash when they slammed into "Roulette Dares (This is the Haunt of)" like madmen, flailing as they attacked their instuments. The evening was brought to a climax with the immense closing track of Frances the Mute, "Cassandra Gemini", a half an hour multi-levelled trip through free jazz and deep space acid-rock. The crowd went wild with applause and it was many minutes before those calling for an encore realized that they would have to walk away.
my band: http://ektoise.bandcamp.com/
