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Ambulance LtdAmbulance Ltd TVT/Shock Open up the glossy, polished insert to Ambulance Ltd's self-titled album and you'll find, in amongst various examples of artistically meaningless photography, a band photo that makes them seem like the most fashionable poster boys of English rock'n'roll. Actually, I don't even know if they're English, but they have that ready-for-NME look: the perfectly coarse facial hair, the quiet, introspective stares, and of course, the well-trained use of hair product. It doesn't bode well for their music. Thankfully they're not all they're cracked up to be. In fact, the opening track on this record is quite exciting: Yoga Means Union is an instrumental which borrows a few musical suggestions from The Smiths' How Soon Is Now, and was certainly a surprise for me. Then the second track, Primitive (The Way I Treat You), seems to come straight out of 'Circle High And Wide'-era Snout (and oh, how I love that album). Sure, it was a little pedestrian, but it wasn't all bad. Actually, 'not bad' sums up this album quite well. It's an album full of classic songwriting (Anecdote or the excellent Ophelia, for example), but somehow just lacks the sound or the energy to make it a classic album. Consequently, it's going to soon be forgotten by pretty much everyone. But for those of us who grew up in Australia through the 1990s, there should be quite a bit to salvage from this collection.  |
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