Ok, just finished the album. You can read below on my thoughts or just skip to the end for the one sentence impression.
This disc plays more like a movie than an album. Listening from start to finish is really the only option for enjoying about half the songs on the album as they seem to exist more to transition moods, advance the "plot," or just space-out the audience(and the band) for awhile. Anyone who wants an album that plays like a list of similarly themed singles will not want to waste their time with Frances the Mute.
I respect Mars Volta for the fact that they stick to the "we are playing this music for us, listen if you'd like" attitude. Some might label it as pretentious, but at least it's genuine, a rare trait in "indie" music nowadays. Being a musician myself, I can relate to the periods of drawn out instrumentation. Being a critic, I can see how people would question their decision to incorporate it on the album. The simple answer is, you shouldn't buy this album if you aren't already in to the Mars Volta's brand of space-rock.
Despite being a fan of "the Mars Volta's brand of space-rock," there are some issues I have with this album. The biggest one is, like a movie, I don't think I could listen to the whole thing over and over again like I might a cd. It's unfortunate, because that pretty much eliminates over half the album's worth of music when looking for a single track to listen to.
Another issue is, I miss the presence and style of flea's bass playing. The bass on this album seems to oscillate from no presence to an omar guitar riff played on bass. I just feel that omar is at his best when playing off of someone more "mainstream." It worked great at ATDI, with Ward trying to play pop all the time(Ward's observation, not mine), and Omar finding all sorts of ways to harmonize and counter-melody. The new guy seems to stick too close to Omar's style and writing to give him room to surprise or shine. This is just my opinion here of course.
On a lighter note...
I swear, on some of the tracks, it sounds like the Mars Volta just left their instruments on feedback and left to grab some stuff from the vending machine before coming back and dropping the jam. I can't tell if this is a complaint or not because I kind of like how it promotes the continuous live show aspect of the album.
All in all, I enjoyed the album immensely. I would recommend it to any prog-rock fan that truly is looking for something original. Be it a good or bad thing, not many people are doing what the Mars Volta are in (almost)mainstream music nowadays. True fans shouldn't be let down by this outing, you all know what you're getting into when you listen to the Mars Volta.
My one sentence review:
Francis the Mute is a narrative over an album-length space-prog-latin-jazz-rock jam.
