by Ryan Pangilinan
I first came across Washington DC’s The Ambulars through I Could Die Tomorrow, one of the best mp3 blogs on the internets. They wrote up this great description that piqued my interest (as all pop-punk bands that don’t sound like Fall Out Boy are apt to do). What I ended up with were two really great EPs that played non-stop on my iPod for nearly three weeks. When we decided to start Totally Crushed Out, The Ambulars were on my short list of bands I wanted to interview. I reached out to them via their Myspace and they were all cool enough to answer my questions.
TOTALLY CRUSHED OUT: How did the band get together?
MIKE: The three of us have known each other for a long time, though we had never played music together. Jen and Andy approached me at a show with the idea of doing an Alkaline Trio cover band just for the summer. It quickly evolved into an actually band with our own songs. The idea was to do an ephemeral summertime pop-punk band before Jen moved to Chicago.
The sound of the Ambulars has very little in common with contemporary pop-punk and seems to take a cue bands like The Promise Ring and Weston. Was this a conscious decision to not latch on to what kids consider "pop-punk" these days?
The sound of the Ambulars has very little in common with contemporary pop-punk and seems to take a cue bands like The Promise Ring and Weston. Was this a conscious decision to not latch on to what kids consider "pop-punk" these days?
M: I think this is more of a product of our influences. We all grew up listening to pop punk bands so we have that common vocabulary, but I know at least my writing influences were not pop punk bands. They were more along the lines of 80's and 90's indie rock and shoegaze bands and K-records-type indie-pop, not that we necessarily sound like it. I think we all approached the songwriting with different musical points of reference, but we still had that shared common ground. I think “pop-punk” to us means something different than what it refers to nowadays in its current form.
JEN: That's true, for me personally, when we were starting up I'd been listening to a lot of the type of pop punk you'll hear at Insubordination Fest mixed in with a couple 90s favorites like Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience, Dinosaur Jr, and tons of Jawbreaker. Super summery driving sing along music.
ANDY: Our influences seem to come from all over the board, and for me this band is kind of a great attempt to balance the old with the new. The influence of pop punk and emo bands that I loved when I was a bit younger, like Saves the Day and Lifetime, has been really present for me in the writing process, in addition to music that is more currently relevant to me right now, like Bruce Springsteen and Dinosaur Jr.
The "Summer Fling EP" and "The Summer of the Ambulars" are sonically different in terms of recording and the stylistic approach to the band, but they still share a vulnerability. How did you choose which songs from the acoustic EP to record electric? J: We wanted to represent as much of our whole range as a band as possible when we did the acoustic EP, so we each have at least one song on it where we do the main vocals.
M: “Summer Fling” was recorded more out of necessity than anything else. We had already begun to record “Summer of the Ambulars” [and] it was taking longer to record and mix than we had budgeted for. We wanted to have some sort of release for when we played a pair of out of town shows so we recorded an acoustic EP. Two of the songs were already electric live songs, we just decided to take a few and strip them down for a quick release. These two songs were recorded acoustically after a band practice. I think we just picked songs that we thought would make interesting acoustic versions. The other two were written and recorded at home specifically for the EP.
A: I read an interview with Thurston Moore where he said something like "if you can't play it on the acoustic guitar then it's not a real song." While that may not be totally true, I do see what he means, how you should be able to strip a song down to its barest parts and still find something there that is tangible and relatable. That's been the cool thing about this acoustic EP, is discovering the songs below the loud crunch of the guitars and the drums.
A: I read an interview with Thurston Moore where he said something like "if you can't play it on the acoustic guitar then it's not a real song." While that may not be totally true, I do see what he means, how you should be able to strip a song down to its barest parts and still find something there that is tangible and relatable. That's been the cool thing about this acoustic EP, is discovering the songs below the loud crunch of the guitars and the drums.
Are the writing duties split individually or is it a collaborative effort?
M: One of us will show up to practice with an idea or rough skeleton of a song. As a band, we build upon it and all contribute to it until it's done.
J: We noticed right away that writing music together was totally not stressful and actually a lot of fun. I think the lack of pressure to be a certain way or fit into a certain genre or to have only one lead vocalist or whatever led us to explore our various interests together while writing and try combining different/new things that maybe we wouldn't have otherwise. Also, because we work on all the songs together (including some lyrics), I think thematically everything became really intertwined. Practices became times for us to sit and talk about all the huge changes going on in our lives and around us at the time, dredging up old memories but also looking forward to making new ones. So dealing with change/growing in general is probably the hugest common thread in what we've written so far.
I noticed that the band is split up by cities, does this limit your touring time? M: Well, we don't really tour. The distance thing is still being worked out. The plan was to have the band just exist for one summer and then break up (thus “Summer of the Ambulars”) but we all had too much fun to let that happen and our friends supported us. We play shows when the three of us are in town together, though the band is not constantly active.
A: It would be cool to tour...one day we'll rent some old station wagon and tour around like National Lampoon's Vacation.
There's a real DIY sensibility that the band has that aren't really present anymore. Would signing to a label be in the cards for you or even something that you'd welcome if given the opportunity?
M: The three of us met in a DIY punk scene, putting out zines and playing in hardcore bands so it's natural for us to continue with that sensibility. I think we would be open to working with a label in some capacity, though it would obviously need to be the right label and the right kind of relationship. I think we are happy with our station as a DIY pop-punk band, and getting signed isn't something we've really talked about and it certainly hasn't been a goal of ours.
A: it would all depend on what we have time to do as individuals in the future. i would certainly welcome the chance if it was presented. being DIY doesn't mean instantly turning down potentially neat opportunities when they come your way. but it's hard to tell if it would permit in our life schedules at the moment. in your early to mid twenties life changes a lot very rapidly i am discovering, and commitments take you different places, both geographically and mentally, and you have to stay true to your path. you never know what's coming down the road though, and I'd like to think we'd be open to many different possibilities.
Finally, what do The Ambulars have planned for the future?
M: We plan on playing shows whenever we can and possibly writing and recording a 7”, though all plans are purely speculative. This band quickly outlasted its life-expectancy so we still don't know what we want to do yet.
J: We'd also like to do a longer tour, since we only had time to play local shows and a very small weekend tour this past summer. Since we're all so busy with various things (grad school, other musical projects, multiple jobs, etc) the likelihood of us even attempting to make that happen before summer '10 is pretty slim, but you never know!
A: The future won't know what hit it. we're already constructing a practice space fit for underwater environments for after the polar ice caps melt. i guess that'll make our station wagon obsolete but we'll get some underwater hovercraft like in "Life Aquatic" and tour around to the different underwater punk houses and play cool shows.
(The Rains from Summer of The Ambulars)
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