Album · The Mars Volta
Frances the Mute by The Mars Volta
Frances the Mute is an album by The Mars Volta, released in 2005. 2 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 31 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “The Widow”, on 28 lists with a best position of #7.
Frances the Mute, the second album from The Mars Volta, came out on Gold Standard Laboratories and Universal in 2005, and this time guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López ran the board himself. Two years after the Rick Rubin-produced De-Loused in the Comatorium, he pushed the band's prog-rock sprawl out into dub, ambient haze, Latin rhythm and jazz, with his brother Marcel Rodríguez-López now on percussion and Juan Alderete newly locked in on bass. Adrián Terrazas-González, who joined on saxophone for the tour that followed, turns up among the contributors.
Cedric Bixler-Zavala wails over Jon Theodore's hurricane drumming and Ikey Owens' keyboards like a man narrating a fever dream, and the songs stretch and mutate until you lose track of the exits. It's exhausting and thrilling in equal measure. It was also the band's biggest seller, debuting at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and going gold on more than 500,000 US copies, and it landed on plenty of year-end best-of lists.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Frances the Mute on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Widow | 28 | #7 | – | 2005–2022 | |
| 2 | L'Via L'Viaquez | 3 | #43 | – | 2005 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.