Dudes, bros, and babes attended the spectacle last night that was Amazing Baby, as many industry-heads and wannabe models showed up at the Music Hall of Williamsburg to snap shots and hob-knob to the jams of the Brooklyn 2-piece slash 5-piece slash 7-piece.
Amazing Baby formed in January of 2008 with two core members Will Roan and Simon O’Connor. The two have known each other since college, Roan attending Bard and O’Connor attending Wesleyan. They started writing together in a bedroom under the Williamsburg bridge, and demos of the two quickly began circulating to friends and other bands and they soon found themselves out of the bedroom and into a practice-space. The band has gone through a few members before settling on a concrete 5-man line-up for the studio and 7 person line-up for live shows (2 female back-up singers) in mid-Summer 2008.
[Simon, Will and back-up singers]
It’s been an organic rise for the band, featuring former members of every Brooklyn band that almost made it (Lions & Tigers, Stylofone and Diamond Nights). Actually, I think Diamond Nights did well in a Wall Street, straight-to-the-bank type of way.
[Rob Laakso]
Their set opened with “Invisible Palace” and closed with the energy of “Narwhal” – a creeper jam that had crowd members, including Will Berman of MGMT fist-pumping. I bet you thought you just might make it through one Amazing Baby review without mentioning MGMT, but you were mistaken. The two bands just hang-tight. Get it? Rad.
[Matt Abeysekara - drums, Don Devore - bass]
The band has gotten tight, it’s the real deal. They didn’t fight through feedback or mismatched vocals, everything was on from the start. Guitarists wailed, drummer was right on time, the singer howled, and the back-up singers were hot, on-point, and from Halifax which adds some extra street cred. Amazing Baby had the audience mesmerized and ready to go in whatever bohemian-psychedelic direction they needed to.
The dudes in Amazing Baby got drunk, threw down, and had a good time in front of a hometown crowd. There’s going to be a lot of touring – Stateside and across the pond with the aforementioned namedrop – in the upcoming months. So stay tuned for more info on this soon-to-be, former great, next big thing, international-phenom band.
Written By Will Suter
Photos By Maia Stern
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