Rediscovering Thrice's "The Artist in the Ambulance"

colynomial

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Jan 15, 2008
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Toronto
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One of the pivotal moments in my life was finding the band Thrice because they essential bridged the gap from the trendy, skate-punk music that was popular when I went to highschool, and "metal". Of course once I started listening to "real metal", I fell out of love with Thrice as they became less heavy and kind of went on to pretend to be Radiohead anyways.

Anyways, I recovered this old, dead HD that had been sitting in my drawer for a few years and found a bunch of these old albums. Artist in the Ambulance was one of them so I gave it a listen last night and was absolutely blown away. The songwriting, arrangements, production and even the mix is just so awesome. There are a lot of really cool, tasteful ideas involving weird timing and stuff. Here's a couple of the heavier tracks to check out if you've never heard the album:



 
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Man, TIATA changed my life. I still absolutely love that album, and was gonna see Thrice next week before they cancelled the tour.

I hate the new stuff, though... absolute crap. :(

There was a multitrack version of the title track off TIATA rolling around for a while - I know Machinated did a remix of it that I preferred to Andy Wallace's original. TBH I'm not a huge fan of the production - it's clean and it works, but it could've been improved in a lot of areas, even with simple panning/level changes.
 
Yea man I agree. The production could have been better especially with the guitars, but I really like some of the soundscapey elements that fill out the mix. As I understand it most of that violin-like stuff was just done with Ebows so it's kind of cool that everything is basically guitars, bass, vocals and drums. After that album I think they got out of control with that kind of filler stuff...

Still though, great ideas and arrangements!

I gotta get my hands on those multitracks...
 
I absolutely agree great, great album. Flows perfectly with so much emotion and the sounds on it are really unique and organic. Blood clots got me into Thrice and is really heavy regardless if people don't want to label it as metal. Awesome band.

Cheers,
George.
 
I absolutely agree great, great album. Flows perfectly with so much emotion and the sounds on it are really unique and organic. Blood clots got me into Thrice and is really heavy regardless if people don't want to label it as metal. Awesome band.

Cheers,
George.

So right about the flow and emotion.

It's definitely one of those albums that you really want to listen to from front to back. It's like one seamless, 45-minute song but each track still completely stands on it's own.
 
awesome to see you guys think about thrice the same way i did back then. just beautiful record.
metaljonesy, any chance you can put the session files online again?
 
Thrice is fucking amazing.
They seem to do the complete opposite of AC/DC (which is only a good thing) in that they constantly push themselves to move forward musically and create a new album each time. Personally, I'm a bigger fan of Vheissu though, but the band has yet to release an album anything less than 4/5.
I love the post hardcore genre in general though and no matter how much I was always into metal, I could never abandon it, because it's music that deeply inspires me.
Even though I'm a metalhead, I'm not ashamed to admit my favorite album ever is Relationship of Command by At The Drive In.
 
Just listening to this album again... reminded of one thing that really bugs the crap out of me.


In All That's Left, that godawful screaming thing that comes in during the last chorus at 2:38, on the right side. Sooooo annoying and I have no clue why the hell it's in there!
 
all thrice is good thrice.
Loved that album. Love EVERY album
Did some remixes of it just the other day!!
haha
one where i did my thing, and one where i really overaccentuated the soundscapey bits.

But yeah, the multis are really interesting especially compared to the final mix.
Wallace pretty much took all the room mics of (which sounded GREAT)
and tucked the delay bits way down.
The editing is REALLY shoddy on these as well.... chunks with no fade ins and outs, gaps with loud click blareing through, Beat detective glitches, dodgy triggering... all fun!!

anyway... check my mixes out.

http://files.me.com/greyskullstudios/uqzfq0
 
Fuck yeah! My sister's boyfriend got me into this album way back when... Was in the same position as the OP in that it kinda bridged me onto stuff..... I used to love that way too fat kick drum. I didn't love the direction they took but maybe that was cause I was then going through my "everything has to be heavy as shit" phase... Will re-check for sure.
 
I was into thrice like 5 years ago, this year ( january) my gf insisted on flying to London to see thrice+glassjaw+brand new
All I know is Thrice rocked, and got me into listening their albums again ( "digital sea" being one of my new discoveries)

I'm a grouchy guy, and I was there forced by marital powers. Loved Thrice and hated Glassjaw since ( and I loved glassjaw, what a mess of a show...)