w/the Turn-Ons, Hypatia Lake
Sat May 15, Chop Suey, 9 pm, $8 adv.
Less than a year ago, Brooklyn, New York's Ambulance LTD released an EP that gave audiences a taste of their peculiar brand of pop, one that varies with each song. It would be easy to mistake them as British, as they incorporate dream pop with definite shoegazer influences. Their full-length LP (the 2003 debut was simply titled EP) roars with jangling guitar-driven Brit pop--American indie-rock styles readily evident and joyful--trilling with keyboard and descending with melodic, gorgeously executed tumbles, each song sung dreamily by vocalist Marcus Congleton.
This is music that benefits from a set of headphones if you want to wrap yourself in its fully realized, skilled, and scattered sound. "Stay Where You Are" remains a favorite of mine, with Congleton singing about a world he wishes he had the ability to inhabit as those around him do. Still he'll settle for what he can get, would like to look out for someone sometime, but that's all he has to offer: The song fades out with variations of the lines "Don't aim high/Don't aim low/Don't hang on/Don't let go." Things get heavier on other tracks: On "Primitive (The Way I Treat You)," a song reminiscent of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, he's still limited, but realizes that everyone is, in some form or another. "Relax," he says, "I've got the time to find a way."
