Brooklyn psych-rockers Amazing Baby got famous the old-fashioned way: by posting some songs on their MySpace page and having friends in high places.
Guitarist Simon O’Connor and vocalist Will Roan only had four of their mostly up-tempo, sonically spacious songs recorded and available on Amazing Baby’s profile when their old Wesleyan University friends MGMT (who were by then alt-electro mega-stars) put the fledgling group in their Top 8. That led British hype-factory NME to write about Baby…and from there, the buzz boomed.
After putting out a well-received EP (called “The Infinite F---ing Cross”), Amazing Baby have recently released their debut LP, “Rewild,” and grown their lineup to five. The seemingly endless stream of press and praise has yet to abate.
Home in New York after what he called “possibly the longest day of my life” (a whirlwind festival performance and 15-hour flight back from Japan were involved), O’Connor took a couple minutes to talk with Metromix.
Has the touring lifestyle settled in for you yet?
You know, it’s weird. I was having dinner last night with Andrew [VanWyngarden] from MGMT, and bumped into one of the dudes from Vampire Weekend, who joined us. It was funny—their albums came out like 18 months ago and they’re doing the post-very-successful-album tour and they’re both totally sick of it. At this point, I think we’re getting used to it—like, we’re slowly realizing that you don’t have to get absolutely s---faced every night on tour, you know? I think that’s something that happens with maturity. We’re not totally used to it, but we’re getting there.
Have you found some positive aspects of it?
I’ve learned how to play a good show—I think we all have—and that’s definitely positive. You definitely learn how to become a machine, and I think it makes you closer in every way. It’s like being in the army or something: you get tighter musically, as a unit, and you get tighter emotionally—that’s something that’s pretty amazing. And I’ve gotten to see all these crazy places I never had been to.
It’s a young band, but it seems like you guys talk about it in long-term ways. Could you grow old in Amazing Baby?
Well, not like the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, but maybe like Sonic Youth. I would love that: to continue making relevant, different music almost as not even what I would consider the same band…but we still release albums under the name Amazing Baby. Like, me playing trombone with a Ukrainian string trio behind me in the year 2030. I’d like that.
Your record is pretty eclectic as it is—did you set out to do that or is it something that developed?
I think the eclecticism is definitely something we set out to do. The difference between Amazing Baby and my previous projects is that I used to sculpt songs to fit within certain genres to appeal to a certain demographic, and I was aiming for success. When Amazing Baby started, I had sort of given up on that and gotten a day job and just made music for me and my friends. I wanted to record an album by myself, or with Will, really. And then it turned into something I had always wanted to do.
People mention drugs a lot when talking about the album, but you mentioned drinking. You strike me as more of a steady booze band.
I think so. It’s easy to kind of slap everything with the “psychedelic” moniker, but I think we’re just a pop band. We’ve done as much drugs and alcohol as the next group. We just had so much press attention early that I think people didn’t really have anything to write about, so they said, “This music sounds vaguely psychedelic and there’s elements of drone and things like that.” It’s especially the English press: Because we sound relatively psychedelic, they thought we were permanently on acid. And, well, I’ve done more acid than my dad—and he was a hippie—but still, that’s not really where the music comes from.
Have you had any time to think about if you would do your rise to fame differently?
Yes, I have, definitely. I think I would have not put anything up on MySpace until the entire album was done. Then I could play up the reaction that we got with that album, and I would write a new one and release them both at the same time. [Laughs] I do feel like we’ve already grown a lot since what’s on the album, and we’re definitely writing new stuff now. We’re coming out with a single for “Supreme Being,” which is actually one of our first songs, that we reworked in the studio and had some of the girls from Au Revoir Simone sing on. It’s kind of a different sound.
Anything you’ve got to do in New York before you leave again for another long stretch of touring?
Yeah, I’ve been running around. I’m actually from New York, so it’s more stressful for me because I have literally everyone I know and have known ever in my life, including my family, my grandma—everybody lives here. And they know when I’m back, ‘cause they look at the MySpace schedule and they know if I don’t call them. Today, I went and saw my dad, then I took my little sister shopping with my mom, then I went to my old house…and now I’m getting on the train to pick my girlfriend up from work. [Laughs] I think I’m taking care of it!
