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October 5, 2009 - Monday
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For all of you readers that aren't familiar with the geography of Canada, I'm going to solve a riddle for you. There's no ocean in the lovely province of Alberta. Instead you get a series of rivers, mountains and prairie terrain. Couple that with the fact it is as cold as a whore's heart, and you might wonder how a surf rock band like The Ramblin' Ambassadors can exist?
The answer, as their new record - Vista Cruiser Country Squire - proves, is by somehow mixing two parts hillbilly with one part Dick Dale and one part Spicoli to create a sound that is pretty well unique. Sure, Surfabilly is something lots of bands run with, but try to picture Corb Lund leaving his horses at home and trying to kick it for a few weeks at Huntington beach. The Ramblin' Ambass have all the shimmery, vintage sounds (the songs are laced in tremolo), but they still have the dusty textures and feedback you'd expect to come from heavy bearded, plaid shirt wearing, tattooed hombres.
Camino Real opens the effort and while you settle into the joyous surf guitar, you get a wake up call from the distortion and grit that settles at the bottom of the mix.Cecilia Ann uses the same recipe, and the suprising surge really pushes the band past sounding like another Dick Dale/Ventures outfit, and more into the realm of theRed Elvises. Cupcakes De Milo has some feverish guitar work, heavy punk rawking drums and I guess if I wanted to put the sound in perspective, I'd say that if you wanted to surf to this music, you'd be the guys they talked about in Dogtown and Z-boys that would fight you over a wave.
That's not to say the band isn't routed in the classic sounds. They take the time to pay homage with covers of The Surftones and The Bel-Airs, it's just that they are trying to put their stamp on the genre. Perhaps the biggest treat for the listener is their take on the Sadies track, Rat Creek. The Ambassador's keep the crashing drums and high energy, but add a bit more of the California sun to the track, and the result is terrific.
I know most people think surf rock was played out after Pulp Fiction (or maybe after the Fatboys dropped Wipeout), but this record gives the sounds the kick in the teeth needed to keep you listening for 11 songs. Don't believe me? Just listen to the guitar solo on March of Dimes and enjoy.
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September 29, 2009 - Tuesday
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Current mood:  busy
this is from a Dutch review of Vista Cruiser. I used Google tranlate.
In the instrumental surfsound of The Ramblin' Ambassadors ring hrough an unbridled love for the past. It had been lose itself wellpossible in uninterested eye flaps ..-cat practices. Of all that on Vista Cruiser country music nothing Squire. With a zest raw Tex-Mex feeling, country music Americana and especially much tremolo, they, write numbers which had not notted become in Tarantino klassiekers. The numbers work also once more to the point contagiously. Moreover the Ambassadors are their predecessors audiblely grateful with tribute to The Surftones, The Bell-Airs and The Sadies in tight covers. Therefore the BBQ put outside but, construction a party, every summery occasion gets a lively note with these uninhibited lords who surprisingly enough from Calgary, Canada comes. I dare predict that even niet-liefhebbers of the genre for the axe go at bel onion phthisis. On traditional reads the Ambassadors play at marbles with smooth Groove. Who will stop them?
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