SONG: "Stay Where You Are" - Ambulance LTD (Ambulance LTD, 2004)

Much is made in the music press nowadays of what’s considered ‘cool’ at any given moment: who’s got the right haircut, who’s been seen at what gigs with whom, which musical style’s hot-to-trot from week to week (currently something called ‘punk-funk’ I believe, which I’m pretty sure The Rapture cribbed from Gang of Four a good couple of years back so that’s yet another rehashed current trend sure to last all of five minutes…) Occasionally though – just occasionally – a band comes along who prove themselves the glorious exception to the rule.

Ambulance LTD (pronounce the individual letters) are cool without even having to try. So laid back they might as well be permanently horizontal, this loveably nonchalant New York quartet effortlessly meld the icy sheen of Interpol to the open-hearted candour of Elliott Smith. That they somehow managed to slip under the radar to deliver a debut album of grace and poise at the tail-end of the Noo-Yawk hype machine simply affirms the fact that you can’t compensate for a lack of class with propaganda – it’s something that a band either has or they don’t. However, while Ambulance have finesse in spades, the reason their music works so well is because the style comes a resolute second to real substance. This is a band who craft first and dress snappily later, meaning that their songs are imbued with a velveteen flair that impresses and stirs simultaneously. Believe me, a year from now we won’t be saying the same thing about ¡Forward, Russia! or any of their fly-by-night contemporaries custom-built to zero in on the zeitgeist before crashing and burning quicker than a heat-seeking missile.

Stay Where You Are is by far the standout from Ambulance LTD’s self-titled debut, an album smoother than George Clooney and Brad Pitt sharing a Galaxy bar and the aural equivalent of having your ears gently stroked by Jessica Rabbit. The track opens with two minutes of shimmering guitar noise which blends various layers of the song’s primary chord structure in reverse. While I will sheepishly admit to cutting this part of the song off for brevity’s sake when including it on compilations, the effect if taken as a whole is utterly mesmeric: too ambient to constitute feedback and too melodic to pass as mere dissonance, the sheer tranquillity of this extended introduction puts you in exactly the right frame of mind to best experience what follows.

When the song itself kicks in, it almost sounds like the band are barely even playing, such is the degree of minimalism with which they approach the task. Half-sung and half-whispered, the vocal lines linger in the background, often overlapping and cross-fading to ethereal effect. Indeed, despite being quite a jaunty little thing overall, I actually find this track perversely calming – its quietly moving central refrain perfectly counterbalances the insistent musical strut to evoke a sense of wide-eyed innocence, a feeling best encapsulated in its gorgeously understated lyric: “Stay where you are, I’m right behind you / …I might not be the one that’s true, but I’m trying don’t you know”.

The climactic movement at the end of the song is the real zinger though. A looping guitar-line weaves gentle patterns around the melody as lead singer Marcus Congleton (a man presumably not named after the crappy Northern town where I spent my teenage years) juxtaposes diametric opposites in a bid to further pacify his intended: “Don’t hang on, don’t let go / Don’t aim high, don’t aim low”. Stripped of the ability to cling to anything tangible, both he and the objection of his affection are simply left hanging in mid-air, as if dangling serenely in suspended animation. As only the best songs can, Stay Where You Are accurately evokes this sensation of abandonment by taking you to a place of absolute calm where it feels like nothing can hurt you.

Wannabe lounge-lizard contemporaries like The Strokes could try for years to write something this beautiful, but they’d never get anywhere close. It’s like liquid caramel lolling over your tongue as you slip into a blissful slumber. Girls, if you ever get this on a mix CD from a guy, chances are he’s really trying to tell you something; I suggest you listen carefully, as I seriously doubt they’ll ever be able to put it anywhere near as eloquently themselves.