Amazing Baby

Amazing Baby's debut effort, Rewild, has a simple dogma: add dashes of novelty and a healthy heaping of clear, assured vocals to different yet familiar touchstones. The resulting record is clean and often catchy, though not particularly original. Nouveau-hippie-light leadoff "Bayonets'" success hinges on a "kids are alright" refrain, which has worked for every band that has ever employed it, and it doesn't fail here. Orchestral undertones distance it from its predecessors, but it remains a rehash. Other highlights crop up, particularly the frolicking "Kankra" and the Jesus and Mary Chain-indebted "Old Tricks in Hell." Some hallmarks are less auspicious. "Invisible Palace" is a foot-dragging Pink Floyd-nod that gets particularly obnoxious when it steps on a Beatles/T-Rex seesaw, and "Pump Yr Breaks" traipses into glam-ish territory with spacey effects ('nough said). Conversely, "The Narwhal" manages to blend Yeasayer, the Stranglers, and latter day Verve into a mostly palatable concoction. Rewild is a tidy, safe outing that neither offends nor resonates.