AEM005 Amazing/Wow

There’s some­thing about the guitar/drum duo that lends it instant cred­i­bil­ity in my eyes and ears. Bands like the Japan­droids, PS I Love You, and Amazing/Wow are the stuff that rock music is made of, and I’m just a sucker for bands that really let their balls hang out. If you can’t say what you need to say in 3 chords and with shitty dis­torted singing, maybe you need to sit back and recon­sider the whole rock music thing, eh? I mean, you can gussie it all up with har­mony and some tricky chord sub­sti­tu­tions, but a rose is a rose is a rose–they don’t really do a whole lot to change the fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter of the music. Amazing/Wow is just two dudes, ban­gin’ it out, but they ele­vate the whole ven­ture to such epic pro­por­tions that a whole army of gui­tarists (a “gui­tarmy,” if you will) couldn’t show them up on stage. Fel­low Ampeater writer Nick Kelly saw Amazing/Wow a while back, and wrote, “Amazing/Wow is really one of those bands that hits their stride live. You can get a sense of their raw energy from their record­ings, but see­ing them live is truly a phys­i­cally over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence. Instead of going to another big-name show at Web­ster Hall and hav­ing to pinch your­self mid-way through to con­firm that you are not in fact dead, go see Amazing/Wow in a loft some­where. They sin­gle­hand­edly reminded me that some­times all you need is a bit of melody and a whole lot of adren­a­line to make music worth­while.” Hell yeah, that’s the spirit. Amazing/Wow is Bar­rett Lind­gren and Adam Fer­gu­son, and they’ve been mak­ing abra­sive punk music with deli­cious pop hooks for only about a year now. Based out of West Philly, these guys are the real fu*king deal. Keep­ing the DIY tra­di­tion alive, Amazing/Wow isn’t label bound, but their record­ings are killer enough to keep me head­bang­ing at my desk all day long. More­over, with­stand­ing one of their live shows is pur­port­edly akin to surv­ing a tor­nado. Awe­some, sign me up.

So now down to the real busi­ness: we’re serv­ing up a nice new dig­i­tal 7-inch from Amazing/Wow, so check it out. Side A is a punk anthem for the new mil­len­nium called “We Don’t Need Any­thing.” They’re right, they don’t need anything–not even a bassist. Fu*k bassists. The song takes off with some hefty feed­back, ush­er­ing in a vocal intro and a hov­er­ing gui­tar part that sud­denly casts us off into the meat of the song before we really know what hit us. I don’t think I had heard any­thing made in my life­time that actu­ally pro­pelled me to punch the air dur­ing the cho­rus until I found this song. Amazing/Wow has a pretty basic agenda that they ful­fill with style: punk songs + catchy melodies + lots of raw untamed mas­cu­line energy. Even the most apa­thetic of hip­sters will find them­selves look­ing like bearded bobble-head dolls when they put this one on. “We Don’t Need Any­thing” is a per­fect exam­ple of what makes Amazing/Wow so great. Lis­ten to it, now. Seri­ously, scroll to the bot­tom of the post and click play. The rest of the review will still be here when you finish.

The B-Side of this disk, “Cov­ered in Blood,” shows what sep­a­rates Amazing/Wow from your nor­mal run-of-the-mill two per­son punk band (though I refuse to believe that such a thing actu­ally exists). Amazing/Wow com­bines pop and punk in a way that gives cre­dence to both gen­res. The song builds over a two-note riff, adding tam­bourine and drums until the vocals finally enter and remind us that we’re lis­ten­ing to some­thing very, very spe­cial. The refrain, “I would like to see your face cov­ered in blood,” gives way to a 3-chord straight punk riff that quickly becomes just a lit­tle embarassed by itself and drops us back into the indie-infused shell of the song. The song’s a bit schiz­o­phrenic like that, alter­nat­ing between a deep indie gui­tar groove and straight punk. Oddly, I miss one when I’m hear­ing the other, which is maybe why I’ve had this song on repeat for hours now. It’s the per­fect bal­ance between music that draws heav­ily on a cer­tain genre and music that’s directly ref­er­en­tial. This is the kind of tune that gets jammed deep inside your head and stays there, but since you can’t really sing and have a shitty mem­ory, the ver­sion that’s in your head is always slightly out of tune and just loops half a verse over and over again. Prac­tice makes perfect?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that there’s some dis­sention amongst the Ampeater crew as to what songs are Amazing/Wow’s best. I won on the 7-inch and got my two favorites, but Nick would insist that “Where is the Uni­verse” and “Laser­face” bet­ter cap­ture the band’s syn­the­sis of pop and punk, as they actu­ally take a sec­ond to breathe and let a cou­ple notes ring out every once in a while. I guess that’s okay, but part of what makes Amazing/Wow so potent is pure endurance, both in terms of their own per­for­mance and what they demand from their lis­ten­ers. It’s not an easy task to keep up with Amazing/Wow, but if you’re up for a good time it’s one hell of a ride.

Want more music from Amazing/Wow? You can ask the boys for a CD through their MySpace.

Ben Heller and Nick Kelly

Side A — We Don’t Need Anything Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Cov­ered in Blood Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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