Baby, I’m Amazed

SteveK on the forthcoming release from Amazing Baby

If you’ve never heard of Amazing Baby, you can be forgiven for the oversight. Unless you’re a very hip member of the New York City Indie Music underground, chances are that you haven’t heard of them.

I suspect that, if the people at Shangri-La – their recently-signed to label – are smart, you and a lot more people will very soon hear a lot more from Amazing Baby; this group has a hell of a shot at the big brass ring.

Amazing Baby formed last year, and in a couple of weeks time their first full-length album, ‘Rewild’, will drop. Whether you like Pop, Rock, Indie, whether yearn for the refreshing and the original or whether you want something comfortably familiar, ‘Rewild’ is about to become a must-have.

I can’t even begin to quantify their sound; there are strange, familiar elements: bits and pieces, sounds or arrangements or instrumentations from so many different pedigrees that it doesn’t make sense that they work together, yet somehow they do. I’m at turns reminded of early Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground, John Lennon, The Warlocks, with elements of Brit-Pop and Punk thrown in for good measure.

Yet somehow the songs on ‘Rewild’ retain a potent originality, and a distinctive, out-of-the-way hometown shithole dive intensity and sincerity that really belongs to a genre of its own; call it the New York Sound, or let some better-paid PR pundit come up with another label.

This music is relevant for its refreshing originality, its trippy vibes and unique style. Of the eleven tracks on this disc, there are none I don’t like. This is a stunning debut, one that deserves to be called to everyone’s attention; this one is going to be on my best-of 2009, and it should be on a lot of other people’s best-of lists, as well.

Amazing Baby: Rewild
Shangri-La Records
Steve’s Rating: 10/10
Album drops June 23, 2009