Customer Reviews

They Ate Themselves

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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Distribution for this title is currently being negotiated and is only available directly from the label (www.swimslowly.com) until US distribution can be established again. Thank you.

I don't know exactly how I stumbled across this band. I think I was listening to The Bedroom Heroes and was so impressed I wanted to buy their album. (Afterall, I'm no pirate) Turns out the bedroom heroes formed a new band called The Robot Ate Me on Swim Slowly records. I had to have it all.. and wow. The Robot Ate Me's They Ate Themselves.. is the most honest and genuine album I have ever heard. Every song is interesting and different. Very slow and melodic with some great synth/keyboard and guitar riffs. I've put the album on in my car a lot and whoever is with me is always impressed with it. I just ordered The Robot Ate Me's newest album off Swim Slowly records, and it came with artwork, a random polaroid picture, a sticker, a poster, a handmade booklet of art and the cds.. and on the cd leaflets they were in were actually scraps of the songwriter's notebook with lyrics on them. Probably the best $15 I have ever spent in my entire life. What an amazing band.. I'm not too good at writting reviews but if you are thinking of getting this album..get it. It's worth it.

I was introduced to "Robot Ate Me" one cool late fall day. Friends of mine were playing a show at a coffee house, and happened to have a guy from California playing. He happened to be in town. He was a quiet, shy guy with a huge grin on his face. He sat down on the stage, legs crossed, and drew the attention of every single person in the room for his entire set.

I bought the CD off of him that instant.

The CD is best described as Indie Lo-Fi Pop. Dark, and at times depressing, the singer whispers lyrics, an acoustic guitar is picked, a drum drums, a cascade of different noises crosses the sonic plain. You can feel the raw emotion in the music. A personal nature, almost as if you are reading a scrawl in a private journal.

Trust me, and buy this CD.

This is an album unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It somehow mixes synths, guitars, saws, accordions, and other found sounds into this new (dare-I-create-genres) post-pop sound that is just fantastic.

The songs are typically depressing and introspective, lyrically, but the lyrics are only supplementary to the album as a whole. Too bizarre for words, I would recommend this CD to fans of experimental music along with fans of pop music.

Kid A what?

This cd is great...tRAM is coming out with a new cd in the beginning of feb'04. Be sure to get that one as well. *cheers*

This is one of the finest CDs of the year. You might not expect it to be though.. The songs are sometimes very odd. But the melodies and vocal harmonies hidden beneath are wonderful and beautiful. Thios album is astoudingly good, and will likely rank in my top 20 of 2003. I suggest anyone who is a fan of music purchase this asap.

Despite the look of the cover art, this is not a new Add N to X record. Regardless of the band's name, this is not new IDM "process music" or a new software-driven opus. Other than the fact that the album was probably recorded straight to hard-disc, neither the band nor their record has anything to do with robots. They do, however, have everything to do with 22 year old songwriter Ryland Bouchard and his friends. If you know them, They Ate Themselves will finally explain why you didn't see them for several months last year: they've been holed up in a studio, purging their souls onto tape to bring you this gorgeously crafted musical diary.

The Robot Ate Me is Bouchard's collaboration with several other San Diego natives who share an interest in making "diverse" music. On paper, the oodles of instruments listed in the production gave me a slight twinge: these guys sound like they're either They Might Be Giants-style outfit or a horribly pretentious group of indie-rockers who play lots of things very badly (yes, there is a difference between the two). Neither of these scenarios could be further from the truth. These songs are artsy, eclectic and about as unusual as you could expect from a rock-style band. However, the musical elements mesh gracefully, and, despite the sonic juxtapositions, everything wraps up in a neat organic brew. The down-tempo, drum machine and accordion-fueled "They Ate Themselves" sounds just as deservedly at home here as the dubby, Tango inspired "Sugar & My Rotted Teeth". Violins, toy pianos, moogs, trumpets and power saws all live in this world, but rather than use a kitchen-sink approach, The Robot Ate Me have pieced everything together in a tasteful manner, orchestrated around the point of focus: Bouchard's manic-depressive and introspective vocals. Thom Yorke would be an easy, lazy comparison, but that's only due to Bouchard's whispered falsetto and penchant for heart-on-the-sleeve vocals. He exhibits traces of Wayne Coyne's eccentricity, Neil Young's reticence Johnny Cash's old-school lyrical honesty.

Digging into this music is not easy going: if you're even slightly sensitive, these songs will have you curled into ball on the floor under the kitchen table. They Ate Themselves is as manic-depressive, as introspective and every bit as engaging (and as damn good) as a Kid A or a Dark Side of the Moon; it might take you down that grey, foggy, soul-searching path, but you'd be foolish to miss the journey.