Album Review: The Amazing Ambulance

Ambulance is The Amazing's fourth studio effort and like last year's Picture You, it is an exercise in controlled melancholia.

It begins with the steady, melodic drumbeat of the title track, a slow-building, incessant number that opens out into a wall of sound. The Amazing use three guitars, a combination of synths and a strong bass, and construct their songs over the drums that are the bedrock of their tracks.

Each song is carefully crafted, layer by layer, so that it sounds like each musician is part of the band and yet is also allowed room to breathe. Songs like 'Tracks' and 'Floating' make full use of the skill of all three guitarists, who engineer a sound both soaring and subtle. The Swedish quintet don't shy away from acknowledging their influences either: the group's lead writer Gunrup has said: "On Ambulance I wanted to incorporate stuff I grew up with, like The Cure, so I asked Moussa to play the same drum pattern, while Reine played the distorted solo." The album's only oddity is 'Blair Drager', which fuses a trip-hop beat and Gunrup's crooning vocals to produce a sound both bizarre and exhilarating.

Ambulance winds down with 'Moments Like This' and 'Perfect Day For Shrimp', on which they step away from the heavy, claustrophobic feel of the rest of the album. Instead, they embrace a tone that, while dark, somehow retains a special lightness, as fingerpicked acoustic guitars and shimmering synth underscore Gunrup's softly tragic lyrics.

Like their previous work, Ambulance will ooze into your mind, slowly, softly and insistently. The Amazing have produced a work of soaring, emotional rock that wears its heart on its sleeve, and is all the better for it.