It wasn’t our fault. We know we said we’d take bands into interesting nooks and crannies, we know we said we’d make them do it acoustically, we know we said it would all be done in nice HD video… and we know that we’re about to present Amazing Baby using electric guitars in near invisible lighting conditions, without having even left the damn venue. It was either that or not get them at all you see. So, yes – we know what we said. But no, we’re not sorry at all.
In a superb brace of hipster credentials, Amazing Baby don’t just live and work in Brooklyn, one of their number was even in a band with MGMT, when they were all at college together in Connecticut. This, apparently, is more than good enough for some of the lazier parts of the internet, and those folk should probably just go watch the pretty moving pictures now, I’m sure a kitten will be along soon.
For the rest of us though, Amazing Baby present some happy conundrums, which all come from the slightly schizophrenic makeup of the creative engine behind the band, singer Will Roan and guitarist Simon O’Connor. We, rubbishly, thought we could describe them respectively as the ‘psych’ and ‘rock’ parts to the lineup. Perhaps more eloquently, O’Connor was once described by the NME as looking like “a Faith No More-loving metal-head who wandered into the wrong audition by mistake”, which pretty much sums up why, when you take a listen, you will keep thinking about MGMT, shortly before getting kicked in the face.
We managed to get two songs out of them on the day, their recent single ‘Headdress’ and a cover of The dBs’ ‘Black And White’ and we’ve decided to call this our first ‘semi-acoustic’ session. There’s something very pleasing and earthy and true about a band perched slightly awkwardly on the side of a half-built stage, with a jerry-rigged set of amps and no preparation whatsoever – easily as challenging as doing it acoustically, we reckon. Granted, the picture quality’s not ideal, but we had shown up uninvited in the middle of soundcheck and the nice people at Sneaky Pete’s quite rightly had better things to do than worry about us, so we’re glad we got what we did – as, we are sure, will you be.
