The Robot Ate Me (Ryland Bouchard) – “On Vacation” 2CD/handmade book – Swim Slowly Records [Album As Art #38]

The Robot Ate Me – “Apricot Tea” MP3/download

The Robot Ate Me – “What Will Come to Pass” MP3/download (song randomly recorded in Egen, Hungary; cool!)

The Robot Ate Me – “Jesus and Hitler” MP3/download

I’ve been ruminating a lot on my transformation — made during the time so many turn to indie sounds: the college-radio years — to total out-sound/noise/brain-blast weirdo and, if I were to pinpoint one album that hipped me to that whole hidden-valley, pop-up world of underground music, it would probably be The Robot Ate Me‘s On Vacation double album.

It was one of my first reviews as a dog-faithful helper-outer at 90.7 KZUU FM in Pullman, Wash., and, along with a handful of other, as-it-turns-out game-changing records like The Unicorns‘ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?, Interpol‘s Turn Out the Bright Lights and Pinback‘s Blue Screen Life, it helped show me the way of the indie jedi.

On Vacation, however, is ten-times more abstract, creepy and Outsider than the three titles mentioned above (though WWCOHWWG? is pretty NUTSo), so I’m wagering it had an even bigger effect on a young, fledgling, often-misguided Gumshoe (why did I like Umbrella Sequence so much?). 

I’m reviewing the super-limited, hand-made version of On Vacation here, btw (I got #341/5000). I haven’t even seen the “legit” version, nor do I need to: This is one of the first examples of the Album As Art aesthetic I got my grubby little hands on, and it left a mark.

The two discs are split into a thematic push and pull. The first is a found-/sound-collage-leaning collection of politics-up-front half-songs that stand up as the best work Ryland Bouchard achieved as The Robot Ate Me, at once Twink- and Mt. Eerie-ish in its tug and twaddle.

The second disc, as Bouchard once put it to me, is where the “Vacation” stuff comes in. It’s a, “Hey, everything’s OK, let’s do fun stuff, we’re American” nightmare cloaked/draped/soaked in enough sarcasm to choke a silver-throated elephant. It’s a reverse wake-up call that ends up being damn effective in getting its so-cheerful-it-must-be-masking-great-sadness gist across.

I’d have to lean toward the first disc as far as overall quality, but both carry their own merits, such as:

• As much as, to this day, Mr. Bouchard hates “Watermelon Sugar,” the sunniest lounge-lizard self-love ballad here, I still think it’s a victorious moment and perhaps the high spike that ties the entire 2-disc set together like the hand-bound twine that stitches the book portion together. Vaguely Radiohead-ish — and I do NOT use that comparison lightly — and a model for what Midlake kinda went for on Bamnan and Slivercork, “Watermelon” is a Moment trapped in time for me. Simple as that. Extra points for the achingly, QUEASily quaint lyrics that must have been painful for a bard such as Bouchard to have written, wondering whether people will Get the over-the-top smarminess or assume RB’s gone soft (or, more appropriately, to the beach).
•  Lyric snippet from “The Genocide Ball,” from Disc 1: “So Jesus, and Hitler, were in the back, seat, tryin’ to make out / Their tongues, were twisted, and tied, through, their mouths / They drove taxis, and cars, just to try, to get, out / Jesus, and Hitler, were in the back, seat, makin’ love.” Need I say more? Yes, to mention that as these lyrics are being sung, deadpan-style, as a loopy litany of samples — classical scores, record static, spooky keys, loud, thumping bass blurbs, “pops” and “clicks” — drifts underneath like a wind-blown cloud floating under the black galaxy. Death.
• The pots/pans-banging of “The Republican Army” (Disc 1) is as future-thinking as it comes, a Daedelus-blessed mash-up segueing into a violin-bolstered song about … an army of douche bags. So seamless is B-chard’s mastery of samples it’s a wonder he insisted on a more guitar-driven modus operandi later on …
• Disc 2′s “Apricot Tea” is a bit cloying during the verses, but its electric jangle and tasteful use of subtle, soon-to-be Four Tet/Lali Puna beats works everything out just fine. Ghost chants are always a plus, no?
• I almost forgot about “The Red-Haired Girl”; it’s another spot-on song that just hits the mark with me for reasons I can’t explain, save that the choral arrangement on the verse is sublime. A heavier, soft-distortion chorus doesn’t manage to carry through the momentum of the verse, and that’s … OK.

From there you just have to listen. Don’t forget to check out the pics of this crazy, collectible artifact from seemingly forever ago (sometime in 2002), and read the lyrics to “Apricot Tea” (which you can listen to UP THERE) below … (picking up the sarcasm yet?):

“If you want to lay at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean,
I’ll be the one that comes with my ship and drops the anchor down.
Will you be the one that smiles for me?
I’ll bake you muffins and apricot tea.

If you want to glide in the night sky,
I’ll be the one that comes with my plane and pulls the stars out of the night,
And brings them to the day for you.

Oh, will you be the one that smiles for me?
I’ll bake you muffins and apricot tea”