Frances the Mute

Frances the Mute is the second studio album by progressive rock band The Mars Volta released in the US on March 1, 2005. The album’s lyrics often jump from Spanish to English. Though not as commercially successful as De-loused in the Comatorium, it received considerable critical praise. The album displays a deep jazz influence while infusing Latin flavor into many songs while utilising many of the Dub, Ambient and Electronica influences and techniques experimented with in De Facto and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s solo project in order to create one cohesive composition divided into many tracks. Originally to be titled Sarcophagus, Frances the Mute sold 123,000 copies in its opening week and has sold 465,000 copies as of September 2006. The album made multiple “Best of” lists at the end of 2005. In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock, the album came #18 in its list of “40 Cosmic Rock Albums” and the album was named as one of Classic Rock‘s 10 essential progressive rock albums of the decade.

Jeremy Ward, audio artist for The Mars Volta until his death, had previously worked as a repo man. One day, Ward discovered a diary in the backseat of a car he was repossessing, and began to note the similarities between his life and that of the author — most notably, that they had both been adopted. The diary told of the author’s search for his biological parents, with the way being pointed by a collection of people, their names being the basis for each named track of Frances the Mute. Ward was in the process of completing it at the time of his death.