While {$Thrice}'s third effort bears the imprint of {@Sub City}, the charitable arm of thriving L.A. indie {@Hopeless}, the grandiose die-cut packaging of {^The Artist in the Ambulance} also features the famous rainbow spine of {@Island}, or, in the parlance of the 21st century business umbrella, {@Island Def Jam Music Group}, a division of {@Universal}. Following the same route as sonic compatriots {$the Used}, {$A.F.I.}, and the 30 or so other bands thanked in the liner notes, {$Thrice} makes the jump to major-label land with the aid of big-league production and mixing, sick cash flow, and the freedom to stretch both its sound and its vision (each song receives its own panel, upon which each bandmember ruminates). For {^Artist}, helmsman {$Brian McTernan} and mixing guru {$Andy Wallace} have tightened the seams that hold together {$Thrice}'s patchwork print of post-{\hardcore} bellow, emotional bluster, and unabashed {\metal} wankery, ensuring an album that teems with the urgency of {$Thrice}'s peers' recent work. {&"The Abolition of Man,"} {&"Cold Cash and Colder Hearts,"} and especially {&"Paper Tigers"} could have easily appeared on 2002's {^Illusion of Safety}; however, none would have been as tightly wound as they appear here. Indeed, the latter cut sounds like a vintage {\hardcore} rant bleeding through on a cassette dub of {$Accept}'s {^Restless & Wild}. Wrapped in razor wire and glinting in the moonlight, {&"Paper Tiger"} leads into the churning rhythms of {&"Hoods on Peregrine."} Here, {\hardcore} is switched out for {\emo}, but the technical {\metal} framework stays. Elsewhere, first single {&"All That's Left"} drops a little too much homeroom poetry on listeners ("We tried to bleed the sickness/But we drained our hearts instead/We are the dead"), but still manages to move along at a brisk, teary-eyed clip. It's guaranteed to be the theme song to a tortured teen romance. The more traditional hook of {&"All That's Left"} is welcome. Together with the album's relatively straightforward title track, it checks the unforgiving pace of {^The Artist in the Ambulance}, which sometimes becomes so busy with complicated riffing, solar plexus percussion, and wordy lyricisms that it starts to implode. Certainly benefiting from the ears and editing of {$McTernan} and {$Wallace}, {^Artist} is the strongest {$Thrice} album yet, meaning that {@Island/Universal} gets its money's worth in the best way possible: with good music. ~ Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide