Listening Station: The Mars Volta, 50 Cent, Judas Priest, Bettye Swann

The Mars Volta goes epic with Frances the Mute

The Mars Volta

Frances the Mute

Modern rock radio must be in the middle of a transformation if its stations are playing the Mars Volta, which they wholeheartedly are. Smack dab in the airplay Top 10 is the El Paso-cum-Los Angeles outfit's "The Widow," an entrancing, elegiac and apocalyptic ballad resembling the closest thing to a traditional pop song from the Mars Volta's sophomore full-length, Frances the Mute.

If there has ever been a period since the early `90s alternative music explosion that so openly embraced deeper and more challenging rock, it's now, and the Mars Volta--led by former At the Drive-In members Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez--represents one of the most progressive and vital-sounding bands garnering attention. It laid a foundation of critical and moderate commercial success with its 2003 epic, De-Loused in the Comatorium, and it has built upon that base with the even more audacious Frances the Mute.

Like its predecessor, Frances boasts a storyline at its core involving the internal dialogue of someone prior to prematurely meeting his maker. This time, the plot--hardly discernible by merely listening to the album--deals with a random diary deceased band member Jeremy Ward has stumbled upon, which documents the search for the author's real parents--a quest Ward personally connected with. Themes of identity, family, loss and dependency float in and out of the album's five songs, three of which contain four or five parts.

That approach 7may remind you of Green Day's American Idiot, but the Mars Volta's compositions are much more tightly linked to their lyrical themes, and they wield a more sonically anarchic spirit. During the "Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus" suite, the band colors each part with various genre flourishes--jazz, salsa, funk, prog or hardcore--showcasing incredibly vast range. However, it keeps the playing tight enough to convey a single, unconventionally focused journey.

There are plenty of more conventional and strident guitar moments, like the incendiary closing of the album's final suite, "Cassandra Geminni." There are also several uncontrived infusions of ethnic (mostly Latin-flavored) music, something white-bread indie rock has needed since the Pixies last flirted with it back in the late `80s and early `90s. Occasionally, the band free-associates with indulgent droning noise, especially at the beginning of the four-part "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore." This is where less would seem like more. But, overall, the Mars Volta have triumphed--again--with its expansive, no-borders approach to modern rock, and it deserves any attention it can muster.--Mike Prevatt

50 Cent

The Massacre

For a guy named after a couple of quarters, Curtis Jackson sure can sell it. Maybe his enemies in the world of rap are right--maybe the dis track "Piggy Bank" is more about building hype than building real beef. Maybe his ousting of The Game from his G-Unit posse just as The Massacre hit the shelves falls along the same lines. But at the end of the day, all the buzz and drama will get him what he wants, as he acknowledged to a TV audience on the day of his album release: "Beef records don't really sell records. `In Da Clubs' sell records."

While it is a bit diluted at over 77 minutes and 21 tracks, The Massacre is full of those club bumpers and some of the rapper's best work, helped along by grade A production from producers Scott Storch and Dr. Dre. Storch's Bollywood-flavored "Just A Lil Bit" and "Candy Shop" will be all over the radio for months, with 50's sing-song cadence bouncing along perfectly with the tablas. Sex, violence and braggadocio are the only topics, and things get tiresome in a hurry when talk shifts to guns. The intentionally cartoonish "Gatman and Robbin" featuring Eminem injects a little life, but the best track here is "Gunz Come Out," a theatrical death dirge programmed by Dre. 50 also kidnaps the excellent and soulful "Hate It or Love It" from Game's album for an extended remix.

If it had been pared down to 10 or 11 songs, The Massacre could have easily been a rap classic. But there's really no slighting 50 Cent, because there's no disputing that everything he touches will sell.--Brock Radke

Judas Priest

Angel of Retribution

L.A. ruined metal, because metal became about girls. Metal is not about girls, it's about demons and evil hordes and fiery death and winged chariots and shit. It's about rampaging, machine-gunning guitars ripping holes in your abdomen, not coke-fueled all-nighters with a pair of 38DDs. Somewhere around 1985, the SoCal hair bands made it about girls and ruined everything.

Judas Priest, one of the all-time great metal bands, was victimized by the incursion of Motley Crue and the other preening pretty boys. Rob Halford, K.K. Downing, Glenn Tipton et al. didn't do hot-chick songs, and for the gay Halford, at least, it became a real dilemma.

Most of the top metal bands of the late '70s/early '80s have tried to kickstart their careers, with little success. Probably the only one to sustain its audience over the past 20 years is Metallica. So, here comes a new Judas Priest album, reuniting Halford with his old bandmates, and you gotta figure it's another ill-fated attempt to return to glory. And you'd be right, except that this album kicks ass. And it kicks ass because Priest has picked up right where it left off with its best album, 1982's Screaming for Vengeance.

A few titles from Angel of Retribution's track list immediately tell you the band is going back to basics: "Deal with the Devil," "Demonizer," "Judas Rising," "Wheels of Fire," "Hellrider." Now these are metal themes, and the music stays true to form. Halford's powerful tenor has lost none of its operatic fury, while guitarists Downing and Tipton deliver the old-school thunder and lightning. The only misstep is the slightly Spinal Tap-ish "Lochness."

Could Judas Priest lead a roots metal revival? Could the real deal eclipse the never-quite-there attempts at pairing rap and hairball hardcore with the metal tradition? Probably not, but Angel of Retribution nonetheless is a pleasing piece of metal heyday.--Geoff Schumacher

Bettye Swann

Bettye Swann

The digital revolution may have buried the bloated corpse of the music industry, but it also saved its soul. Sabotaged by unlimited access to their material, new musicians can become overnight sensations and has-beens in the same lunar cycle. This reality kills careers and enrages fans seeking a totem that can satisfy their aural fixation.

But because time is elastic and the songs of the rock era are timeless, undiscovered wonders can reappear and revive the ears of the most hopeless listeners. Consider the joy that awaits all eager music lovers who stumble upon Bettye Swann.

Working with unheralded Louisiana producer Wayne Shuler in the late 1960s, Swann--who now lives in Las Vegas--recorded two groundbreaking albums that wed the sweet grooves of Civil Rights-era soul music to the bedrock heartache of country music. Now available on one CD, these recordings sound like an ecstatic revolution of longing subverted by joy, grief defeated by optimism and misery overwhelmed by jubilation.

Backed by Shuler's dynamic arrangements, Swann's confident, indomitable vocals shatter the artificial boundaries that separate rock, soul, country and pop; in her own assuming way, she is as revolutionary as Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Van Morrison. Covering works as diverse as The Bee Gees' "Words," Merle Haggard's "Today I Started Loving You Again" and Otis Redding's "These Arms of Mine," Swann makes every song a testament of faith--her phrasing transforms sorrow into the sweetest salvation.--Robert Chancey