Amazing Baby - Headdress

Continuing to plot their trail of destruction using a barrage of 70s sounding guitar palettes and a bit of David Bowie’s spacey nous with a vocal line, Amazing Baby do an odd thing of flinging in the line “your mum thinks I’ll be with you” on ‘Headdress’. Hello… didn’t see that one coming; it’s at once odd and delightfully seductive.

Tapping on your cringe faculties isn’t the only thing Will Roan and co. do very well – take for example the tripping drums that saunter amidst all the pomp of the guitars but hem things in just nicely while not remaining uniform. The whole piece feels like it could only have been constructed within a cloud of dry ice and burning marijuana trails while Roan slinks his way around the mic in a cloak. And that’s precisely what they want you to think.

Unlike their most highly referenced of Wesleyan University chums, MGMT, they are a much more straightforward proposition. The flowery axe runs and slung-out sentiment have transported well from the bygone heyday of prog-rock: but, as with most things, the cyclical return to this method of songsmithery conveys them as deceptively fresh-faced in the wake of synth-wielding wankers.

The hope is that they can maintain an allure without believing their own hype, and equally succumbing to the full-on bluster of everything that made progressive rock a dirty word.