Interview

The Amazons

by Lizz 23 July 2017

Riff driven, catchy, driving, energetic and heavy. Reading band The Amazons are coming to get you. Their debut album has been making serious waves, and their fans include the likes of Radio 6 Music’s Huw Stevens. I spoke to fire haired lead singer Matt about growing up in Reading and how it feels to play its festival, what their LP sleeve’s all about and the thrill of buying his own album in HMV.

How would you describe the music you make?

We like listening to music that is exciting, big and grand whilst also intimate and emotive. If we make music along those lines we’re happy. We like big melodic rock songs, and hopefully that comes out our end basically. It’s never a predetermined thing, it’s just that the music we like bleeds into what we do subconsciously.

How did the band originate?

The band came together about three years ago in its present form – we’d all been in previous bands in Reading with varying success, it had never worked out for us. Me, Chris and Elliott were playing an acoustic gig in an old pub called The Queen’s Arms. We met Joe who asked if we wanted a drummer, and we said yeah man! We jammed and it kind of clicked. We knew that we were on the right path anyway and carried on working with Joe. We knew we’d get good if we put a lot of work into it. There were a lot of drummers we tried out where we just knew it wasn’t the right direction for us, but when we met Joe it all fell into place. That was around 2014.

It’s amazing that one element, Joe, brought it all together.

Yeah definitely. It was his drumming style that did it – it was super loud and exciting. It made us want to play our instruments in an exciting way too. He has real ambition and drive as well, and you can’t have too much of that in a band.

How did you come to first get noticed, and how much effort did you put into getting noticed?

There are different levels of getting noticed. On a local level, getting people to come to your shows, an industry level, a media level with interviews, and then eventually there’s a level where you get played on the radio and people come to your shows across the country. So it’s quite hard to say when we first got noticed, but we did a lot of work at the beginning on a DIY basis as we didn’t have a manager or anything like that. We were determined to grow a local fanbase – we’d buy CD’s from WH Smiths and burn our bedroom demos and make sure we gave them to take away from our shows. We put songs online which connected with people, and built a team around us which then led to going on tour. So it’s a long process to get to a debut album, and it all builds on itself. It’s almost like what we’re seeing now, a swell of interest, we wouldn’t be seeing unless we’d done the groundwork two or three years ago.

I grew up quite near Reading myself and it was never that blessed with local bands for some reason. What’s the Reading scene like these days?

The thing with Reading is that there are a lot of factors involved. You’ve got one of the biggest festivals in the world coming through for three days a year, it’s not really a cultural hub despite the fact that promoters have been trying hard to change that recently, and plus we’re in the middle of Oxford and London, and Reading suffers from that a bit. So when we first started there was no real scene for us to slot into which I think is to our advantage as we’re not defined by or compared to any of the bands that have come out of Reading because hardly any have. It’s different or London or Glasgow in that way. We’ve had to start from scratch. There are a couple of other local bands including Sundara Karma who we’re friends with. Both us and them are adamant that we want Reading to be known for something other than the three days when the festival rolls into town, which is now happening. Hopefully people can look at what we’re doing in Reading – producing two bands on major labels – and realise that you don’t have to move to a major city to be successful. You can create your own success and make people come to you.

You played Reading 2015 on the BBC Introducing Stage – how did that feel?

So good, because it only comes round three days every year but has been a big influence on the fact that we picked up guitars. People leaving Reading Festival on the Monday will be thinking about getting a ticket for next year, or I must get the album from that band I saw. For the last ten years I’ve been every year and I’ve always gone away thinking I want to play at it. I love Reading Festival so much and I was desperate to be involved with it. We played again this year. It’s a special thing, playing at Reading and Leeds – it will always be an amazing thing for us.

How did you manage to keep your sound as raw as it is on your debut album without over producing it?

These are the songs that we’ve been playing on the road for the last three years – it’s essentially a set that we’ve been interchanging as we’ve gone along. We worked with Catherine Marks on a few singles that we felt were a bit overproduced, so we came into the album saying we want it to be more direct. She said the only way we can do this is to get all four of you playing in the room at the same time, we’ll try to get the sounds right then, and lay off the overdubs and mixing. Instead of playing the drums on a track and then saying we’ll fix them later, we’d take a day off in order to tune the drums and get them to the sound we wanted. So we did a lot of live takes, we sometimes ditched the click track and just went on feeling. Whenever you hear any of the songs on the record, then, you’ll be listening to take 13 or take 9 with a couple of overdubs on it which is exactly what we wanted. I’m really glad you picked up on that actually!

The album cover shows a van on fire in a residential area. What does it represent about the album?

The van is our Ford Transit. We called her Big Suse and we’ve been travelling around in her for the past two years. We knew we wanted the artwork to be set in Reading and we wanted to represent that that’s where we were born – that wanting to be in band came out of the boring suburbs. The van was on its last legs and we just thought of the stupidest thing we could do. We wanted to immortalise Big Suse, and not just throw her on a scrapheap. It represents our escape from the town really, plus we wanted it to be eye catching – we’ve got billboards around London with it on, and it looks kind of crazy up there. We’re really happy with it.

Have you got lots more songs up your sleeves or will you start afresh for the second album?

I’m the main songwriter of the group, and I’ve always got a pile of unfinished, half baked ideas so I think going into a second album we’ll work from there and see how it evolves. I’m not sure we know what we want it to sound like, or what songs will be on it. I take my acoustic guitar on tour and I write but it’s difficult to develop the ideas further than that. I just need a couple of days at home to get really bored and to be creative.

How is your summer looking?

Joe's getting married in September, so we'll get some more writing done then. We're playing Reading, which is huge for us – we've got a big festival season and are planning some shows in Asia and Europe as well.

What’s the best thing about being in The Amazons right now?

The fact that I can go into HMV and buy my album. When you’re first getting into music when you’re 11 or 12 you wonder how they make the music, how they record it and package it. You just want to see what’s on the other side of that closed door, to see how it works, and now I’ve seen that. My appreciation for the process for making albums is greater than before because there are so many passionate people involved and so much work. It’s the best thing so far.

The Amazons play the Waterfront on 2nd October. Tickets available from ueatickets.ticketabc.com