Brooklynites Amazing Baby (Will Roan; vocals, Simon O'Connor; guitar) have been on a wild ride—touring with MGMT and Phoenix, unexpected popularity and press in Europe —all without releasing a full length album. 

As guitarist O'Connor told us, "It's funny in one way because this band is so new but we've both been in various bands, trying to do it...forever, basically". 

Interview by Justin Valmassoi

UR: You basically only have a demo out at this point, right? The full length is still in the pipeline?
AB: Yeah, the record comes out in mid-June. We’re a pretty new band.

UR: Is that strange for you? You have a lot of press for a very small output.
AB: It was very unexpected. It was more like, I started the band with Will Roan the singer as just sort of a studio project, thinking we’d both play in other bands. It’s funny in one way because this band is so new but we’ve both been in various bands, trying to do it … forever, basically.

UR: So what do you suppose worked this time around?
AB: I think what worked is that this project is much braver, in a calmer way I’d say. Our previous projects aimed to emulate –purposely emulate- a certain kind of sound and Amazing Baby, it was just a recording project. We never thought it would take off. We just wanted to make a record for our friends. We started recording it in January 2008, just after work, because we both worked together, and then we put up a MySpace and right away we got just like, a ton of attention.

UR: Is the full-length going to be significantly different from the EP?
AB: Vastly. Well, maybe not vastly, but people only know four of our songs, so … I mean, it sounds better. We got to record live in a real recording studio. We have an orchestra on there, so I don’t know, but I mean, our demo wasn’t even mastered, right? Everything was done by ourselves. [The record] definitely sounds a lot … bigger than our demo but I also think it’s much more interesting. It’s a lot clearer. Basically every idea we have we put in a song. It’s very lush music. There’s not much editing that goes on. At times I think it can be a bit much, but then again we’re not engineers, and we didn’t really know how to separate the sounds, so that’s one thing that working in a studio could give us.


"Pump Your Brakes"

UR: Europe (the continent) seemed to fall in love with you guys immediately. Does that seem odd? So much overseas press?
AB: We were talking about this, kind of the scene and what’s going on in music and what’s going on in the economy. Once the economy started to … Once it became clear that there WAS going to be a recession, or it started to begin, I think audiences across the world, and media, kind of gravitated toward a different sort of popular culture and musically it was a lot more lo-fi, less glamorous… Like instead of downtown New York and the gallery scene it moved to Brooklyn. It got a much more DIY feeling. The thing is, we’re just recording this stuff in our bedrooms, you know? So there’s points where we sound like Queen or T. Rex but it’s still a very lo-fi, almost punk rock vibe to a lot of the songs.

UR: How tightly knit is Brooklyn, musically? It seems like nine out of every ten bands that break live in a twelve block radius of one another.
AB: It’s kind of ridiculous. Everyone first moves to Williamsburg or Greenpoint because it’s cheaper than Manhattan, but it’s a relatively safe neighborhood and it has the most practice space. There’s a lot of abandoned warehouses and the like. I’m actually from New York, unlike probably 90% of members of Brooklyn bands, so I’ve watched the neighborhood of Williamsburg change, but I also think people who move to NY to pursue music live around where it’s easiest to create it.

I mean it’s hard. It’s expensive to be in a band. There’s not a lot of suburbia, you know? So you can’t … You don’t have a basement, a garage to practice in. You have to pay rent on a studio on top of rent for your apartment, so areas where rent is cheapest and studios are abundant … Williamsburg/Greenpoint is one of those. Plus, you know, they might as well just have buses that run from the art schools to just ship the graduates in. They’re only there for two or three years before they move on, but it’s like, that’s the place to go at first. And almost everyone that goes to art school is into music somehow, so you kind of get to know people just from playing around. If you like a band, chances are if you make similar music you will come across each other.

Also, musicians want to live with other musicians. Your lifestyles make sense. The tolerance for noise is a must, so musicians tend to huddle up together. I don’t want to say it’s a scene, but there kind of is a scene, I guess. There are a group of bands who came up around the same time who all knew each other before, many of which have made music before, but I think for the most part it’s more that if you’re a band doing well in Brooklyn you’ll end up meeting all the other bands that you like.

UR: Your first tour was opening for MGMT. Is that how that came about?
AB: I went to school with Ben and Andrew. I’ve known them for years. I lived with Andrew for three or four years, and we were basically involved in all kinds of musical projects together in school, then they graduated and pursued MGMT and I pursued something else, so when [the opportunity arose] it was like “Wouldn’t that be perfect, to go on our first kind of big tour with two of my closest friends kind of guiding us through it.”  

Amazing Baby plays a sold-out show this Saturday, June 13th at Park West with Phoenix. You can pick up their full length debut, Rewild on June 23rd, 2009.