Ambulance

THE AMAZING

Partisan/PTKF

I was prepared to take the easy shot at the band’s name, but they impressed me immediately, so I’ll let it slide. The textures are top-notch — these boys have been studying their post-punk how-tos. If the title track isn’t haunting, it’s at least remedially affecting. It doesn’t make me feel, as with Joy Division, that perhaps there’s virtue in my moments of alienation and esoteric disgust. Who knows if that’s a good thing in the end, but it makes a great one-two punch with the dark jangle of “Divide.”

With some of these (“Tracks,” “Through City Lights”) I can only hear R.E.M. from a parallel universe where they went headfirst down the Adult Contemporary/Alternative Country hole, though I can think of worse things. The production also sometimes obscures the essential nature of the songs; maybe “Floating” would have been just a generic mellow tune without the possessed vocal mix or the reverb, but what is it supposed to be now? On the other hand, not many bands on the indie-as-substance circuit do that sunlight-through-the-trees effect as well as they do. Mood counts for a lot here, and they’ve got it — which is lucky, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have known what to make of the gnomic forest dirge titled “Perfect Day for Shrimp.” 

Loud Hailer

JEFF BECK

Deuce

“Loud Hailer” is an amusing way for the quietest Yardbird to refer to himself. I guess it’s really referring to guest vocalist Rosie Bones—yes, the guitar also can be a “loud hailer,” but considering this album is steeped in sociopolitical drama and protest imagery, I’m assuming that’s the main feature. And boy, have they got some great insight for you: we’re all slaves to TV and video games! The children are suffering! It’s like “American Idiot,” but without the Americans; only one song mentions “Jersey wives,” so I can only assume the United States is the country in question. I don’t have any problem with that kind of criticism; I was just hoping the references would be more current than “Grand Theft Auto III.”

Though the former studio rat is as proficient as ever, this is little more than back-to-basics GuitarCenter rock, ProTools effects and all. Bones doesn’t complement Beck at all — it’s more often that her spavined lyrics and overall style clash with the roaring guitars, but the opposite is also true on the few songs where she doesn’t overreach. I’m not always in the mood for Rod the Mod, but at least he never had an ego problem. And even if Bones doesn’t have that, that just means Beck is out of touch, not that he wasn’t always an outsider. But you’d think that someone among this group of recording artistes would be hip enough to update the rest on the last 15 years of world crises.

Travis Johnson lives in New London. He has a music blog that can be found at theoldnoise.blogspot.com. Follow him @ThisOldNoise or contact him at thisoldnoise@gmail.com.