Amazing Baby - Rewild (Artist First)
3/5
I have only been aware of Amazing Baby since I received this album, but apparently they've been the recipients of much blogluv and such-like for months now. More fool me, I guess. Anyway, this probably aided me in writing this review, all things considered, as I was only slightly aware that I was meant to Really Like Them And Say Nice Things Because They're Cool And From Brooklyn, and was therefore reasonably untainted when it came to authoring the thing.
Yeah, s'not bad, actually, although I can hardly see what all this apparent fuss is about (if I have got this all wrong and no-one apart from 7 people in an NYC squat have heard of this band then I am looking like a total fool right now). Unfortunately, for a fair bit of the record AB sound stuck in a rut of their own making, lost in guitar platitudes and vaguely middle-eastern sounding strings. Opening shot 'Bayonets' is a good example of this, with all parts bubbling higher and higher to a squiggly chorus which, unfortunately, just sounds like Vampire Weekend scrabbling around for a groove and failing in their quest. The following number, 'Invisible Palace', is of a similar ilk, with pleasant harmonies lost in a lumbering and awkward five minutes of sub-Nick Cave desert rock. It seems the band know what they want, but haven't quite the guile or courage to execute it, and thus withdraw into already well-raked and shabby territory.
That said, there are a good few moments around the middle of the record where Amazing Baby appear to really think about what they're doing, and come up with some genuinely very good cuts. 'Dead Light' opens with an ominous chug that morphs into a genuinely spooky refrain, and fellow acoustic shuffle 'The Narwahl' sees the potential of their harmonies and Indian influence realised to excellent effect, while 'Old Tricks in Hell' adopts the same sparse, ghosting formula but throws in some thick bass. And as opposed to the bloated plod of 'Invisible Palace', 'Roverfrenz' reigns in its brooding triumphalism until an explosion a minute from the end, anything but trite, that is stemmed as quickly as it is sprung.
Amazing Baby clearly have the potential (and the pleasingly oddball moniker) to join the likes of Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance and High Places as members of the current Brooklyn elite, as demonstrated for the middle-part of the album. However, it'll take time, and a little more self-awareness and assessment from the band, as too much of 'Rewild' is middling and indistinguishable enough to tug it from the realm of Very Promising debuts to merely Must Try Harder.
Artists in this article: Amandine
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