If you've got too many effects pedals to deal with on stage, the best move can actually be to find an extra person to help run your effects for you.

That's doubly true for singers, who have enough to focus on without trying to remember to turn off the delay before they hit the chorus.

Welcome to Strong Songs, a podcast about music.

I'm your host, Kirk Hamilton, and I'm so glad you've joined me to talk about bands with their own effects guy, bands who do their own effects, and sometimes bands with no effects at all.

Strong Songs is supported by Patreon, and while I'd love it if you'd sign up, you can support the show in other ways too.

You can visit the store, which has some great new merch, you can make a one-time donation,

or you could simply leave a review or share the show with a friend who likes music.

On this episode, we are going deep inside one of the darkest, most bewitching albums I've ever heard

to plumb a sea of possible meanings buried beneath the cryptic lyrics and distorted guitars on the surface.

So let's tune down the drums, turn on the tape delay, and dive in.

Music drums, turn on the tape delay and dive in. Not every song comes to you, begging for your approval, rolling over on its back with its tail wagging, just hoping against hope that you will immediately love it.

Some of the best songs, the best albums, and more broadly, some of the best works of art, challenge you and leave you feeling held at arm's length until you fight your way in.

I've often found myself initially pushed away by a work of art, be it an album, a film, a video game, or a novel,

only to find that with some persistence, I eventually develop a much richer and more rewarding relationship with it

than I would have if it had rolled out the carpet and welcomed me in. After all, some of the

same things that make art challenging, depth, complexity, ugliness, purposeful contradiction,

dissonance, those are also the things that can make it profoundly meaningful and beautiful.

On today's episode, we are talking about just such a work, a work within a work, really,

as we're talking about a challenging song off of a challenging album that, for all its dark

imagery and sharp edges, remains deeply important to me to this day.

That's right, it's time to talk about the Mars Volta.

And their singular 2003 album, De Laosed in the Comatorium.

...