INFORMATION The Amazons play the Waterfront on 2nd October. Tickets available from
ueatickets.ticketabc.com
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.
H
ow 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? Te 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 Te 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. Tere 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. Tat was around 2014. I grew up quite near Reading and it was never that blessed with local bands for some reason. What’s the Reading scene like these days? Te 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
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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. Tere 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. Te album cover shows a van on fire in a residential area. What does it represent about the album? Te 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. Te 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. What’s the best thing about being in Te Amazons right now? Te fact that I can go into HMV and buy my album.
LIZZ PAGE Read this interview in full online at
outlineonline.co.uk
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