Words crawl out of Simon O’Connor’s mouth with the all the urgency of a five-minute-long psychedelic track. Right now it’s working because he happens to be describing one as well.
“You create a groove and then turn it into something else, and then once the groove is comfortable you add other elements that climax, like a vocal,” he says. “It’s an epic, orchestral stoner metal chord progression. It goes a little too long—that’s the whole point—right to the point where you get bored.” Then, something happens. It’s one style his band, Amazing Baby— “Not Amazing comma Baby,” says guitarist O’Connor—is known for.
Infinite Fucking Cross, the Brooklyn band’s debut EP released for free via its website last summer, ranges from meandering, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic rock (“Supreme Being”) to dreamy ballads (“Head Dress”), to boasting man-sirens that dare the listener to be forgotten (“The Narwhal”) and even an anthemic Britpop sound (“Pump Yr Brakes”).
“People really didn’t know what to compare us to,” says O’Connor, rejecting parallels made with fellow Brooklynites Chairlift, Yeasayer and MGMT, a band Amazing Baby toured the United Kingdom with last year.
And this month, the band’s first proper album, Rewild, will be released. The guitarist says, “I think it’s a lot heavier, a lot more driving and aggressive than what we’ve had.”
O’Connor was at work in late 2007 at a ringtone factory alongside co-worker Will Roan when the two came up with the band’s comma-less moniker.
“We just had nothing to do, so we would just make up band names,” says O’Connor. “We just wanted to make a MySpace page but we needed a band name first.We were throwing emails around. A lot of them became song names,” he says. “‘Supreme Being’ sounded like we were in the Wu-Tang Clan or something. ‘Narwhal’ sounded like a nu-metal band.We threw the word ‘amazing’ around.Will was watching videos of cute babies doing funny stuff. I had babies on the mind so I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s cool.’”
Roan and O’Connor belonged to other bands, Lions and Tigers and Stylofone, respectively, before the two groups broke up around the same time. O’Connor and Roan’s ring tone colleague, Rob “Doc” Laakso, formerly of the band Diamond Nights, became Amazing Baby’s other guitarist, while Matt Abeysekera of the band Heavy Hands became drummer and Don Devore of The Lilys,The Icarus Line and Ink and Dagger, joined as bassist.
Now, O’Connor is surprised to have sold out clubs in Sweden and be playing two different venues in the same cities while on tour in the U.K. The Brits were the first to eat Amazing Baby up.
“Two years ago they didn’t want anything to do with us, they had their own little thing,” O’Connor says. “NME was filled with British bands.There wasn’t much of a market for American music back then, but in the last year that’s changed, around the time we started.” NME did pick up on the group, and soon Amazing Baby fielded offers to tour the U.K. and bigger venues back at home.
“It’s surprisingly good for a group that doesn’t have anything that you can purchase in stores for almost a year,” O’Connor says. “It was never really made for an audience besides my friends who like what I do anyway. I feel like we kind of disappointed some people who come out to see some shoegazey thing. On the record it sounds gigantic. Onstage it’s more spare: two guitars, drums, bass and vocal. Much more 1970s, more of the jammy element.”
This week, the band will open two hometown shows for French phenom Phoenix.
“They’re one of the few modern pop bands that we all agree are good,” O’Connor says. “I’m not sure how I feel about French people in general, but they came to our show at Terminal 5 and they seemed to enjoy it in their own French way.” To bring things full circle, will there be an Amazing Baby ringtone one day? “I don’t care,” he says. “Fuck it. My ringtone is the Law and Order theme right now. Ringtones sell the songs short. You’re in the hand of these idiots who have to choose the best part of the song and you only get 30 seconds.”
> Amazing Baby
June 18, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Brooklyn, 718- 486-5400; 10, $25. Also June 19 at Terminal 5.
