Ambulance LTD

Item: Ambulance LTD
Author: Tyler Baber

(2003)

Reviewed by Tyler Baber

Discogs Apple Music TIDAL Amazon Music Spotify YouTube Music

Label TVT RecordsDecapolisAugust 2003

indie rock psychedelic pop shoegaze

When New York City's role as the mecca of the musical bohemians was thrown away for the city's growing love of the rave and club culture in the late '80s through the late '90s, no one really cared. The city responsible for making "indie" music cool through guys like Andy Warhol in the past had its throne usurped by Seattle, Orange County, and most recently, Omaha. To make matters worse, it seemed like the city itself didn't even notice. Finally, though, the same musical culture that made both jazz and punk something every American parent hated is coming back through the garage re-explosion. Just as every band coming from Seattle in the early 1990s was compared to grunge no matter how different than it they sounded, so it is that bands like Interpol and Ambulance Ltd. are paired together with the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs by clueless music journalists such as myself.

The aforementioned Ambulance Ltd., whose debut self titled EP was released in June on TVT records, are only like their NYC counterparts in that they aim to be compared more to popular bands from decades past rather than capitalize on modern radio rock trends. Fusing everything from '60s psychedelic pop to '80s dark pop rock to '90s shoegaze guitar, Ambulance realized that someone in the past probably said it better already so why not steal from them and sell it back?

The five piece Brooklyn based Ambulance (the Ltd. is apparently to keep from being sued) have, with this debut EP, become the New Order to Interpol's Joy Division, or maybe the Turtles to the Strokes' Standells. Either way, Ambulance is more than just a hip group of trendy elitists. The sound on the Ambulance EP could have produced hits in any of the eras the band references stylistically. The guitars are lightly distorted, the beats are poppy without being pop, the bass is soft, the keys are used to accentuate. This is fine pop that sounds as though it were imported from the UK, the kind of thing pseudo-indie kids like me are just eating up these days.

Tracks like "Stay What you Are" and "Young Urban" are great driving tunes while the darker "Primitive (the Way I Treat You)" is a standout hit that sounds so vintage I could swear it's a cover. This EP is another sign that the New York "sound" is fast becoming the next big thing, not only in the indie world but in the rock world as a whole. More importantly, though, the Ambulance EP is a sign that the New York "sound" deserves all the attention it's getting.

B+