Unlike my mysterious ignorance of Amputechture, I know exactly why I ignored The Bedlam In Goliath. 

By the time this record came out, my tastes had shifted significantly. My musical diet was still peppered with similarly experimental acts that I obsessed over at the same time I discovered De-Loused, like Radiohead and Sigur Rós. But for the most part, my tastes were far simpler: I was devouring acts like Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent, and whatever else La Blogotheque and The Black Cab Sessions were featuring.

I had come to desire simplicity. Even as a musician, I had “matured” past the progressive post-hardcore of my high school band and honed my craft as a solo singer-songwriter. I might have still appreciated the first couple Mars Volta records, but I wasn’t returning to them often.

So when Bedlam was released, I had little patience for their maximalist prog, their meandering jam sessions, or the claims of a cursed Ouija board tormenting them—however, I did largely agree with the original engineer who quit the project saying, “You’re trying to do something very bad with this record, you’re trying to make me crazy and you’re trying to make people crazy.”

But now that I’ve gotten older—and made peace with my previous selves—I’ve come to realize just how wrong I was about this record. Is it a bloated, self-indulgent behemoth that is often a taxing listen? Probably, but all of the criticisms leveled against it can be directed towards the albums that I love either, so…

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I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s taken me so long to get into Amputechture. It was released right in the throes of my first obsession with the group: I had heard De-Loused in the Comatorium just a year earlier, and it exploded my mind. A friend had burned me a copy of Frances the Mute over the summer, and I would often leave the albums playing on repeat in my dorm room.

So why would I not immediately devour the follow-up? In my memory, I didn’t hear Amputechture until after I had moved home from Chicago in late 2009. At that time, I had bought into the hipster snob narrative that the Mars Volta was a bloated, overindulgent prog rock outfit that released two great albums. The inflated vinyl prices on the later albums didn’t give me much incentive to challenge that notion.

But the most recent batch of reissues happened to coincide with some extra playing around money, so I figured I might as well fill in the gap in my collection between Frances and Octahedron. 

And boy, am I glad I did.

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