Conversations about At the Drive-In’s best release usually dance around a gridlock between In/Casino/Out and Relationship of Command. 

However, that conversation simply cannot be complete without taking their incredible EP Vaya into consideration. While it contains absolutely no shortage of ATDI’s signature angular fury, it also sees the group adding experimental elements into their sonic palate. While it’s often described as a bridge between the two legendary full lengths, it even points to Omar and Cedric’s future in the Mars Volta with astonishing prescience.

In hindsight, you can almost see the factions that would splinter into The Mars Volta and Sparta fighting for dominance in At the Drive-In. It’s easy to imagine Bixler and Rodriguez bringing in elements of prog rock, electronica, Latin rhythms, and dub into the hard-hitting post hardcore riffs brought by the rest of the band. The push and pull between the more experimental textures and more aggressive genre conventions can be interpreted as a band already divided into the projects they would go on to pursue.

Revisionist history isn’t always a great exercise at finding the truth of what was actually happening at the time. And if Vaya is any indication, the two camps once lived in harmony. Because for all of the diverse experimental weirdness on this disc, it’s remarkably cohesive and enjoyable.

“Rascuache” opens the album alternating between abrasive chord clashes, glitching electronics, and a collection of Latin hand percussion. “Ursa Minor” has traces of In/Casino/Out’s pop sensibilities, but they’re buried under spastic bursts of dissonant guitar chords. The lurching “Metronome Arthritis” is one of the most experimental tracks released under this project: a downtempo track augmented by proggy guitar noodling and a whistling synthesizer that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Snoopy Dogg track. “198d,” named for an inscription on the mass grave in Lebanon where drummer Tony Hajjar’s grandmother is buried, fizzles and spurts with a bubbling synthesizer and fragile guitar lines before it explodes with a cathartic chorus.

Music aside, Vaya contains some of the most emblematic Bixlerisms ever printed on a lyric sheet. On “Rascuache” he cries out, “Pacemaker, pace yourself,” an emotional plea that makes no cerebral sense but is felt deep in your core. In “Proxima Centauri,” he tells of an alternate timeline where the ancient Romans conquered space: “Nero has conquered the stars. No one ever saw the spacesuit togas.” “Metronome Arthritis” finds him rambling about ink cartridge funerals and marble caps-locks. It’s impossible to parse a real meaning, but it doesn’t have to be understood to feel his delivery like a punch in the gut.

For my part, I came to Vaya (Spanish for “Wow”) long after falling in love with At the Drive-In. On an early visit to JPUSA, my future roommate walked me to Reckless Records. I picked up a couple CDs (I would begin collecting records a few months later)—World Waits by Jeremy Enigk and a Devendra Banhart album that never caught my attention. They bought In on the Killtaker by Fugazi and this EP on vinyl. They then gifted me their CD copies, which I then fell in love with. So when the lot of records I bought from a friend included this copy, I had to keep it. Now I just have to find someone to pass my CD on to…