Led by guitarist/singer Christoffer Gunrup and including guitarist Reine Fiske from Dungen, Stockholm’s The Amazing have always managed to stay just out of focus bluring the edges of Shoegaze, modern Psychedelica and Indie Rock and on their new record, In Transit, they once again perform the unlikely trick of making music that is both dreamlike, drifting across the consciousness, as well as perfectly constructed. Like their Icelandic cousins Sigur Rós, The Amazing create waves of glacial guitar washes and woozy soundscapes that right at their core are the sturdy foundations of intensely melodic songs. In Transit is the band’s fifth album since their 2009 debut and picks up right where 2016's acclaimed LP Ambulance left off……….the new songs expand on Gunrup's melancholic, textured vision with gorgeous tones, fed through layers of distortion in a style that blends Disintegration era The Cure, My Bloody Valentine’s squall outs and The Flaming Lips psychedelic experimentation all melding together in a vivid combination of melody and mood.
Effortlessly gorgeous, In Transit exists in a somnambulistic netherworld on the cusp of deep dreams, ebbing and flowing in and out of consciousness throughout 11 spellbinding songs. You hear that from the very start of the album, when ‘Pull’ slides into view,with slide guitar casting shapes and shadows across the arpeggios beneath, while lightly jazzy drums slowly propel the song forward through it’s foggy narcotic state while Gunrup whispers his barely audible lyrics within this vast ocean of sound . The rest of the record unhurriedly unfolds as The Amazing take pieces of the Robert Smith song book and add to it fragments of Wayne Coyne’s expanded mind and MBV’s guitars overdriven to the point of collapse to create heavy-lidded shimmering soundscapes and hazy, twisted Psych/Prog/Indie reveries full of reverb and distortion. Stunningly beautiful, In Transit seamlessly fuses the ringing guitars and pulsing bass lines of The Cure on tracks such as ‘Voices Sound’ the Post Punk swirl of ‘Rewind’ and the weightlessness of ‘Leave Us A Light’ with the epic Psych Rock/Shoegaze sprawls of ‘Benson se Convirtio Completamente Furiosa’ and ‘Je Travaille Dans la Banque’. For fans of the previous albums, The Amazing aren’t the kind of band who insist every album has to sound radically different from the one before. They change incrementally, adjusting and refining their sound rather than revolutionising it………………this time, the development from Ambulance is a slightly fuller sound with more vocals and more overdubs giving some subtle depth to the the Swedish five piece's signature dreamlike translucent, crystalline sound.
In Transit is out April 6th 2018 via Partisan Records and is available as a limited edition gatefold 2 x LP, CD and as digital download from all the best record stores and the usual subjects on line as well as being bundled with an extremely limited edition art print, sold exclusively through The Amazing’s Bandcamp page. Pre-order the LP/CD/download here…………..
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