Frances the Mute is the second studio album by the American progressive rock band The Mars Volta from El Paso/Texas. Classic Rock Magazine named the album one of the 10 most important progressive rock albums of the decade.

Reviews

D. Plauk in Musikexpress 3/05: "Listening to Frances The Mute takes strength - not so much in comprehensible moments like the almost meek "The Widow", the strangely santanaesque "L'Via L'Viaquez" and the wonderful, so harmonically elaborate as abruptly blurring acoustic frame number "Sarcophagi"; more in nerve-wracking sections like the brutal "Umbilical Syllables", the sprawling improvisational "Cassandra Gemini" and the tone-deaf nightmare "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Any More," amid which the mariachi trumpets blast into the rushing void, as if to indicate for a brief lucid moment how, after The Mars Volta come to the artistic approach of free jazz in their basic renewal of prog rock: Their music is limitless, but not immoderate. Bold rather than cocky. Engaging, if not crushingly radical, yet always far from from artistic anarchy."

D. Vujanic in stereoplay 4/05: "Music that almost exceeds the listener's volume of attention and whose grandeur one grasps only gradually. Hymns are brought down by salsa horns,m metallic meets dub, superb vocal harmonies rush over syncopated punk rock: wow!"