Thrice have never made a secret of the fact that they are familiar with the sound of The Artist in the Ambulance are not satisfied. For the 20th anniversary, the band is finally treating their dedicated breakthrough album to a new Revisited recording.
The Artist in the Ambulance was following the style-defining The Illusion of Safety always felt the album before Thrice really too in the long run Thrice became; a third work with numerous scene instant hits – but also an irritatingly clinically compressed Metalcore sound, which, in retrospect, is inseparably linked to memories and the time following the turn of the millennium, the Thrice but also in an undeservedly generic genre-standard guise.
The band itself has always viewed this fact critically, complaining that the downright clichéd mix undeservedly ironed out the dynamics and subtle nuances of the material.
At this dissatisfaction The Artist in the Ambulance – Revisited now before an associated tour: The staging (“Produced by Thrice; Engineered by Teppei Teranishi at New Grass Studios; Mixed by Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio; Mastered by Matt Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service“) is aesthetically now there, where Thrice with Vheissu away from carving out a territory in alternative rock – and in doing so closer to how the songs had long performed live.
And in fact, the album is fundamentally better in its new form, has a more coherent character in the context, especially since everything can breathe more and seems more spatial. At the latest when the quartet’s playing becomes more powerful, or rather a bit more sluggish and sluggish, it becomes clear that the modification of the album also has ambivalent sides, which are primarily due to the fact that the past two decades at the youngsters of that time Thrice have certainly not passed by without a trace.
This is primarily due to the fact that Dustin Kensrue no longer displays the same juvenile energy as in 2002, his voice, which has meanwhile become noticeably older, presses with more pathos – this can be heard most clearly in the formerly pop-punk title track, which shows its snappy Sturm-und-Drang attitude already lost a bit. Which in no way means that the gripping pressure has been lost, not at all – it has just shifted anew.
And you have to like the fact that the quiet passages now dive into the ambient parts in a much more elegiac and spherical way – subjectively it at least fits this more organic interpretation of The Artist in the Ambulance quite excellent. Even here, however, the band have shown great care and prudence with any changes, leaving the core of the record intact.
Otherwise it would hardly be conceivable that this time enormously popular guests will be at the microphones – Ryan Osterman (Holy Fawn), Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music), Sam Carter (Architects), Mike Minnick (Curl Up and Die), Brian McTernan (Be Well and as is well known producer of the original record) as well as Andy Hull (Manchester Orchestra) -, but always put their vocals in the service of the songs absolutely without beginning and thus in no way distracts individual spotlights, but the vocal harmony in many places here simply work much more sustainably and thus symbolically for the more complex range of the consistent ones Revisitedversions stand.
While one, one wants to go purely for nostalgia reasons The Artist in the Ambulance will return, of course always going back to the original, but of course the 2023 version fits more harmoniously into the overall work. But the best thing is anyway that you don’t have to decide between the two editions and the new recording feels less like a criticism of the original and more like a worthy love letter to this one.
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