Album Review : Amazing Baby - Rewild
- Written by Jiten Karia
Amazing Baby. Taking in that name I felt a slight giggle about imagining a '90s superhero with the same name. Flying about at night while ma and pa think you’re sound asleep in the crib. Fighting crime with the powers of… woah, I’ve thought about this way too much.
Okay, back to the band now. Amazing Baby have either followed a trend at Connecticut’s Wesleyan University to form an electro-based band like fellow alumni MGMT and Chairlift, or there’s summat magical in the water/beer kegs at the campus. Either way, they’re the latest in a line of US bands that seem destined to make it big in Europe before their home soil.
Two singles have already been served up by the five piece. ‘Bayonets’ opens the album and ‘Pump Yr Breaks’ closes it. As singles, they do the job of giving a ‘sound’ that people can grow accustomed to. ‘Bayonets’ is a touch weaker though. The full pelt of strings in the intro is missed in the verses and to be frank, my attention wanes without it. On the other hand, ‘Pump Yr Breaks’ blasts through any of the drudgery of the album in a sound I could liken to the bombastic sound of Elbow's The Seldom Seen Kid.
Then again, there’s very little you can’t compare Rewild to. There’s a feast of musical sample from folk to glam to (shock-horror) some traditional guitar-based rock.
I can’t knock the album as much as I thought I may. No, they haven’t got a brilliantly original sound, and no, the album won’t instantly grab your attention with the tracks on it, but many of the songs have a charm that can just about be heard.
Some of the subtle genius is shown in ‘Smoke Bros’, which contains the worrying yet catchy line, “we are starving cannibals, s-m-o-k-animals”. Coupled with a well timed series of breaks and riffs, it’s probably one of the best tracks on the record. Shame that the two before it feel a little thrown together…
‘The Narwhal’ is an odd experiment between overlayed studio vocals and folk guitar. The outcome could be better, though the experiment shows an ambition that could have been better embraced. ‘Roverfrenz’ is another story though. Described in an interview as “west Africa meets reggae”, it feels like the obligatory slow track. And it fails in the most peculiar of ways. It never picks up enough to remotely interest me. In fact, the most interesting thing about the track is that part of tune had me starting to sing Johnny Cash’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but expands their checklist of influences to country music.
Rewild is a debut album with a wavering promise. Amazing Baby’s predecessor bands have not made it easy to be as edgy and unique-sounding as they may have been a few years back. Hype may be the difference between mainstream success and electro underground for this band.