The Best Albums You've Never Heard: Ambulance LTD - LP

"Never heard" may be a stretch for this particular album, especially if you were attentive, or lucky enough during the mid-'00s to catch the single Primitive (The Way I Treat You) on MTV2 or Much Music. Chances are you weren't and like all great things that end up on TV, by the time you realized you miss it: it's too late. Another song from the debut, and only, album from Ambulance LTD was featured in the movie P.S., but lets be honest: that's not going to mean anything to anybody.





The album that accompanied this neglected track was, aside from a handful of mostly approving critics, also fairly overlooked. It's really hard to understand why that'd be.


Ambulance LTD spend the entirety of LP, just shy of an hour, trying really hard not to be a pop band while taking a tour of the last 50 years of guitar music. Sugary sweet melodies and a masterful display of songwriting are employed while taking stabs at shoegaze (Heavy Lifting), AM radio soft-rock (Young Urban), early psychedelic rock (The Ocean), americana (Anecdote), 80s alt-rock (Ophelia). There is an unprecedented quality of songwriting displayed (every. single. song.) for such a young band. You'll swear multiple times "that's a Beatles lick, I swear". You'll at least partly be right.





"Wait," you say, "if they sound like all of that, aren't they just ripping off the classics?". Sure, Ambulance LTD are not the most original sounding band of all time. They wear their influences on their sleeves. You could pick out pieces and parts from each song and attribute them accordingly. It's the execution of LP, though, that keeps any of this from being a problem.


It's such an easy sounding record--it sounds like a band who's been around for years doing what well established bands do. Lead man Mark Congleton delivers apathy like a mischievously confident choir-boy, in fact, the whole record feels so confidently executed that you just buy it, and you would even if the songs weren't so goddamn good. Nothing about it sounds like a debut album. The production is slick, but just lo-fi enough to be pink in the middle.


After releasing LP and a follow-up EP titled Young Urban, Congleton began working on a new full-length with The Velvet Underground's John Cale. These recordings would, so far, never turn up after TVT, the label Ambulance LTD were signed to went bankrupt in 2008. The next 4 years have been incredibly quiet from the band. There's never been an official statement that the band was no more but Mark Congleton, who was the only remaining original member in 2008, has been working on new material as Drug Cabin, so it's probably safe to say that it's over. 





Ambulance LTD did give us something that most bands never do in their entire run, an absolutely flawless, yet extremely under appreciated, album. Enjoy all three singles released from LP in the YouTube boxes above, and when you're smitten like you should be, you can click right here to stream the whole album from GrooveShark.