The Amazing – In Transit – Album Review by Killian Laher

Swedish band The Amazing released one of the albums of the year in 2016’s Ambulance.  The follow-up, their fifth album overall sees them continuing with their very lush, languid guitar sound, right from the lengthy opener Pull.  With heavily reverbed guitar lines that melt into Christoffer Grunup’s soft, immersive vocals, it’s very representative of the album, and the band as a whole.

Although, largely a very mellow album, Voices Sound has slightly more strident, almost forceful guitar lines.  But this pales in comparison to the almost ten minute workout Benson se Convirtio Completamente Furiosa.  It starts out relatively mellow with a purposeful build up but unfortunately turns into a bit of a mess.  After five minutes or so the track falls away and is replaced by some really incongruous grating heavy guitars which take the carefully maintained mood and smash it to bits.  And not in a good way.  It’s akin to dropping Slash into a Nick Drake album.  The acoustic, uplifting For No One which follows acts as a huge relief.

It’s all gorgeously blissed out, tracks like A Million Days, First Touch of Light and Rewind melt into each other with mellow, skyscraping guitars.  It’s undoubtedly very impressive and easy on the ear.  The problem is that not so many of these tracks on the first half of the album stand out from each other.  In fact many of the stand outs are in the latter half of the album, Leave Us A Light has echoey guitar lines that evoke the very best work of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, before a really odd ending where the track unaccountably speeds up.  The soft-rock stylings of Asleep seem to merely drift by at first, yet manage to get under the skin and resonate.

At 11 tracks over 70 minutes, In Transit is at times a little overblown and drawn out where 2016’s Ambulance was relatively concise.  Here, the songs are complex, not sticking to two or three chord changes where five or six will do.  But, barring one aforementioned misstep, this is an album of lazy, summery strums to sink into for the weeks and months ahead.

Track List –

1. Pull
2. Voices Sound
3. A Million Days
4. First Touch of Light
5. Rewind
6. Never Be
7. Benson se Convirtio Completamente Furiosa
8. For No One
9. Leave Us A Light
10. Asleep
11. Je Travaille Dans La Banque

Pull –