Son, Ambulance Key. Release Date : October 26, 2004. Label: Saddle Creek. Rating: Andy doesn't dig rating stuff. From a jarring phone message-with-plane-overhead intro, we fall quickly into the most clearly-ringing piano of "Paper Snowflakes." Oh man, this is a beautiful song. The piano is played with a reverb-type effect that jingles and jangles its way through a delicate verse and a tense chorus. The lyrics are stunning and descriptive and arty. "Billy Budd" has a bit of a samba flair in the guitar strums. It's a cute song, much different from "Paper Snowflakes." Straight back into the atmospheric though. "Chlorophyll" is haunting with echoey spacey vocals and a piano again. This all harkens back to San Fran psychaledia, with its peculiar, often ill-fitting combination of weird jarring songs, mixed styles, and soft trippy stuff. Like "White Rabbit" meets "Learning To Fly." ...but San Fran psychadelia in a midwest-sort of way. Like there's a bit of the country and simple, smalltown frustration thrown in. Open vistas and no ocean in sight, that sort of thing. The piano just makes it though - it's a common thread through everything. No matter what the outward style, it has the same jingly, swift feeling to it that really makes it sound 'Son, Ambulancey.' Joe Knapp's voice is riddled with sharp, welcome-to-Omaha fire. The voice twitters and pulses, shaking as it rises, tripping back and forth over the beautiful beats of the music, growling when suited, rising with an exploding breath here and there. He never breaks into a full scream, but his voice begins to crack and squeak when he really gets going. It's a bit disconcerting in the same way hearing a baby you don't know crying is. And finally on "Sex In C Minor" we get our first obvious flowed-in vocal line from bassist Erika Pederson. She has a solid, sweet voice, that comes in more like a non-vocal instrument. Here the two voices battle with an anxious-sounding piano and some random fuzz. Just when you think everything's going to be fine and we're slowly fading out of the song, it breaks out in heaps of insane feedback, halting and re-beginning. Aggh! It's a huge car accident. We seem to be on a trend of drifting back and forth between something gorgeous and something angry. Right after that big mess, we're treated to a drifty, Portisheady interlude with Erika Pederson singing. Strings, drum machines, and suddenly a very Elbow-like vocal. When Knapp brings his voice up to a higher pitch, he sounds pleasantly childlike because he doesn't seem to naturally have a voice that easily flows into a high pitch. Wow, there's so many surprises here. You really should all just go listen to it because I'm starting to get to the point where there's so much going on, I can't really do it much justice. There are too many quick flipovers in style that somehow melt together beautifully even though they make no sense at all in conventional songwriting terms. Bloody awesome. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be feeling anymore. It's like I need to take a break from doing everything else so I can absorb what's coming through my ears. Now there's a jivey, country-jazz tune?? What's happening? "Glitter Angel" sounds like a trippy old tune, but gets into this guitar solo that makes it sound like something from an 80's movie soundtrack. Wild! And then there's a sea shanty... yeah this is so east-coast. The less we have, the happier we'll be. It's a mantra from a tiny fishing village! What a weird album. Maybe Knapp has gone through a few reincarnated lives so far and he's decided to tell us about them all. I might just die everything is so unexpected here. Song of choice : "Sex In C Minor" for sheer pandemonium and keeping me guessing so well. -Andy Scheffler Elsewhere Son, Ambulance website Published : June, 2005.